Robert Aaron Long (c. 1999- ) is a White American gunman who has confessed to killing 8 people in a shooting spree at three massage parlours in or near Atlanta, Georgia on March 16th 2021.
Six of the eight he killed were Asian women:
- Soon Chung Park 박순정, age 74
- Hyun Jung Grant [김]현정, age 51
- Sun Cha Kim 김순자, age 69
- Yong Ae Yue 유용애, age 63
- Delaina Ashley Yaun, age 33
- Paul Andre Michels, age 54
- Xiaojie Tan 谭小洁, age 49
- Daoyou Feng 冯道友, age 44
Yaun and Michels were White. One other person, Elcias R. Hernandez-Ortiz, 30, was injured.
He bought the gun that day. No waiting period. He had no criminal record.
Long first hit Young’s Asian Massage at a strip mall in Acworth, Georgia, killing four, injuring one. About an hour later it was Gold Spa on Piedmont Road in a run-down part of Atlanta, where he left three dead. Nine minutes later it was Aromatherapy Spa across the street. One more dead.
Long was taken alive by police. They found him on highway I-75 on his way to Florida. He has been charged with eight counts of murder and one count of aggravated assault.
Racism: The US has a long history of hypersexualizing Asian women – yellow fever, “me so horny”, etc. On top of that, over the past year amid the covid-19 pandemic, anti-Asian hate crimes have gone through the roof, increasing 150%. President Trump kept calling covid-19 the “China virus” and “kung flu”, like he was an 11-year-old. Or worse.
Is it a hate crime?
Police Chief Rodney Bryant of Atlanta:
“We are still early in this investigation, so we cannot make that determination at this moment.”
Captain Jay Baker, sheriff of Cherokee County, where the shooting spree started:
“[Long] does claim that it was not racially motivated. He apparently has an issue, what he considers a sex addiction, and sees these locations as something that allows him to go to these places, and it’s a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate.
… he was pretty much fed up and had been at the end of his rope, and yesterday was a really bad day for him, and this is what he did.”
Jemele Hill:
“If this murderer were Muslim, Black, or basically anything other than white, there is no way killing innocent people would be characterized as “having a bad day.””
Olayemi Olurin, a public defence lawyer in New York:
“I cannot tell you how many times I’ve told the court that my client denies the allegations, that my client didn’t do something for X reason, that my client is going through a lot in life. NEVER have the police credited my narrative. But get a white supremacist and they switch up”
The T-shirt: Captain Baker has been removed from the case. As it turns out, he had been urging his friends on Facebook to buy T-shirts that say that covid-19 is an “imported virus from CHY-NA,” echoing Trump’s rhetoric to the point of imitating how he says “China”.
– Abagond, 2021.
See also:
- Asian Americans
- White Americans
- The coronavirus – aka covid-19
- Jemele Hill
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Lmao, I wonder if this communist bootlicker idiot will ever report on the attrocities of the blacks/chinese whom he worships. But when a white person does something wrong it’s the end of the world for this clown. Where’s the fairness? If you are fair you will criticize whoever does something wrong, even if it’s from a group of people you admire.
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James Chan, you are a banana, according to the FBI, the majority of race hate crimes are anti-black (49%), only 3.5% per cent are anti-Asian.
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@ James Chan
“But when a white person does something wrong it’s the end of the world for this clown. Where’s the fairness?”
He murdered eight people in cold blood. Where’s the fairness?
@ Cherry Boy
“James Chan, you are a banana”
James Chan is almost definitely a white man using a Chinese surname to try to throw people off.
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About the victims, who they were:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/03/20/atlanta-shooting-victims/
https://www.cbs58.com/news/a-trip-to-the-spa-that-ended-in-death-these-are-some-of-the-victims-of-the-atlanta-area-shootings
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Delaina Yaun’s husband, Mario Gonzalez, was there with her, both as spa customers. He says that the police officers who responded to the scene arrested him and kept him handcuffed for two hours.
Photos clearly show that he is a non-white Hispanic. He is an immigrant, originally from Mexico. He and his family believe that he was racially profiled by the officers, who would not let him see his wife as she lay dying.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9381897/Family-husband-survived-Atlanta-spa-shooting-tell-escaped-handcuffed.html
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This is really sad. I’m glad that it is very difficult in the U.K. to acquire a gun legally.
During the COVID pandemic hate against the Chinese rose here in the U.K. too, especially early on. Some people literally do not make use of their brains.
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White people can buy guns but Black people voting rights are being suppressed. This dude and his sex obsession was having a “bad day.” He kills eight people and doesn’t get shot.
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A surviving witness told a local Korean newspaper that the shooter said he was going to kill all Asians. Funny how that’s not being reported by the MSM.
https://mobile.twitter.com/FridaGhitis/status/1372240592332283914
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He clearly purchased a weapon with a plan. He then drove to Young’s, killed people, drove quite some distance to another location to kill people at two more establishments, it seems to me he was very selective about his locations. There are clearly “gentleman’s” clubs and other massage parlors that he might have selected as well as at least one massage along the way between Big Woods and Young’s in closer proximity to where he purchased the weapon.
I would bet he would have admitted his targets were women even if he expects us to believe it’s a coincidence they were predominantly Asian. I’m no lawyer but my interpretation of the GA law:
“…the defendant intentionally selected any victim or group of victims or any property as the object of the offense because of such victim’s or group of victims’ actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender, mental disability, or physical disability…<./em>”
would be that he should have hate crime enhancements on most of the charges for sex, gender, and actual or perceived race. Sadly, each enhancement only adds a couple years but, added onto 8 life sentences if a judge orders them served consecutively instead of concurrently, maybe he never sees parole.
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The violence against the Asian community is a violation of that community’s rights as human beings. I blame the former occupant of the White House for his xenophobic rhetoric during the pandemic. Also white supremacy and domestic terrorism by white males. Also the intersectionality of sexual fetishization of Asian women and racism.
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Jay Baker is disgusting as well in his attempt to be an apologist for his fellow white male who committed a heinous crime. He should be fired as well.
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@ Open Minded Observer
Yeah, I’m seeing very little discussion in the media of the fact that this was unequivocally a hate crime against women.
Probably that is due at least in part because they are perceived to have been sex workers. There’s still a mentality that the lives of sex workers are disposable.
It’s unclear to me whether they actually were sex workers. Some of these places are legit. Asian owners of nail and hair salons often find spas to be a natural extension of their health and beauty business. Also, massage is an ancient health practice in many Asian cultures.
On the other hand, even at the spas that are mostly legit, some of the workers may be providing sexual services to those customers who request it.
But that shouldn’t come with a death sentence. Not only did the sheriff discount the possibility of the rampage being a racially-based hate crime, but he seemed to suggest that it was understandable because the shooter was “fed up” with sex workers. Like they were a problem to be eradicated instead of fellow human beings with meaningful lives beyond their occupation.
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I happened to listen to that press conference live and I actually started feeling bad for Jay Baker at one point because I could tell he was under tremendous scrutiny from the press and likely pressure from superiors as well to avoid saying anything that might cause rioting or some other such nonsense. Then he said the now infamous sentence and I realized in that moment that he saw the humanity in the perpetrator and not the victims. They were nothing to him… just bodies that inconveniently happened to be non-White which was causing him grief. I’m willing to bet he actually resented the victims in that moment and so he empathized with the perpetrator in a way. I could be way off base but, either way that man shouldn’t be in law enforcement.
Side note: I posted the specific wording of the GA law because White people seem desperate to append all kinds of additional criteria to it just like with they(we) do with the definition of racism. The funny thing is, they’ll allow for the fact this wasn’t racially motivated because the guy wasn’t overtly disparaging towards Asian people until he killed several but, meanwhile, Jay Baker was. So, if it had been him that killed these victims, those same people could see their way to labeling it hate crimes. According to the law, if perceived race was a factor in his victim selection, it was a hate crime.If gender or sex were factors in who he targeted, then they were hate crimes. The GA law makes no mention of swastika tattoos, burning crosses, White supremacist manifestos or Dr. Seuss cartoon collections with anti-Asian memorabilia… So, why do people keep trying to pretend otherwise?!? <– Rhetorical… I know.
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Please send more such cases of unlove to Russia targeting brutal and/or abusive police and high rank FSB officials as victims.
https://www.dw.com/en/russia-shooting-near-fsb-intelligence-offices-in-moscow/a-51741269
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The shooting in Colorado is heartbreaking as well.
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YO JUJU! HERE’S YOUR STORY!
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