2021 Atlanta spa shootings

Events

On the morning of the shooting, Long's roommate overheard him watching pornography. Long later said in court that he felt ashamed and went to purchase a firearm to commit suicide. Around 2 p.m., he legally bought a 9mm handgun and a box of 50 bullets at a firearms store in Holly Springs, along with a bottle of bourbon that he drank while driving to Young's Asian Massage near Acworth.

Surveillance footage showed him arriving and sitting in the parking lot for an hour, during which he loaded the gun. He entered the building around 3:38 p.m. EDT and remained inside for one hour and 12 minutes, paying for a service that ended around 4:45 p.m. After using the restroom, he walked out, pulled out his handgun, and fatally shot Paul Andre Michels once in the head.

He then shot Daoyou Feng once in the head, shot Xiaojie Tan once in the head, injured a man in room 2, and fatally shot Delaina Ashley Yaun González once in the torso while she hid in a corner. Long left Young's at 4:50 p.m. A surviving customer said the gunman entered and began firing; the customer threw himself to the floor, begged not to be shot, and was shot in the face after complying with a demand to look up.

Victims

The attack left seven women and one man dead, with another man wounded. Six people died at the scene, one while being taken to a hospital, and one later during treatment. Six of the victims were Asian women: four at the Piedmont Road locations and two at the Cherokee County spa. The other two people killed were a white woman and a white man.

The wounded survivor was a Hispanic man from Guatemala. According to South Korea’s foreign ministry, four of the dead were ethnically Korean, and one was a South Korean citizen. The eight victims were Delaina Ashley Yaun González, 33; Xiaojie Tan, 49; Daoyou Feng, 44; Paul Andre Michels, 54; Hyun Jung Grant, 51; Suncha Kim, 69; Soon Chung Park, 74; and Yong Ae Yue, 63.

Perpetrator

Robert Aaron Long was born in Woodstock, Georgia, on April 6, 1999, and raised in a conservative community. He graduated from Sequoyah High School in spring 2017 and attended the Cumming campus of the University of North Georgia from fall 2017 to fall 2018 without earning a degree. He was a hunter and heavily involved in his Southern Baptist congregation, with no prior interactions with law enforcement.

Long spent time at HopeQuest, an evangelical treatment facility near Acworth, for what he described as sex addiction. He claimed to be tortured by his addiction since he was deeply religious, and his halfway house roommate said Long repeatedly stated he had relapsed and visited massage parlors for sex workers. Long's parents kicked him out of their house the night before the shooting due to concerns about his sex addiction, and he was reported as emotional after being evicted.

According to police, Long described his actions as resulting from a sex addiction that conflicted with his religious beliefs; he had been a customer at two of the massage parlors and saw them as sources of sexual temptation. He said he initially thought about killing himself but instead targeted the businesses to help others dealing with sex addiction, aiming to eliminate the temptation. He was an active member of Crabapple First Baptist Church in Milton, Georgia.

Reactions

On March 18, President Joe Biden directed that all U.S. flags on federal property, including the White House, military bases, naval ships, and diplomatic posts, be lowered to half-staff until March 22 in honor of the shooting victims. The next day, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris met with Asian American community leaders, after which Biden spoke out against the increase in hate crimes targeting Asian Americans during the pandemic and voiced support for the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act. Also on March 19, South Korea’s foreign and defense ministers held a joint press conference in Seoul with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin; the South Korean foreign ministry issued a statement about the shooting and U.S. anti-hate crime measures the following day. On April 14, the Senate voted 92–6 to move forward with the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, which would let the Justice Department review pandemic-related hate crimes and create an online database.

The Senate passed it 94–1 on April 22, with only Missouri Senator Josh Hawley opposed, and the House passed it 364–62 on May 18. Biden signed it into law on May 20. Sociologist Nancy Wang Yuen described the shootings as part of a broader trend where Asian women are disproportionately targeted in hate incidents, linking it to racism and sexism rooted in the Page Act of 1875 and media portrayals like Full Metal Jacket and Miss Saigon. Stop Asian Hate reported nearly 11,000 attacks on Asian Americans from March 2020 to December 2021, and the FBI noted a rise in anti-Asian hate crimes since 2019.