THE U.S. gunman accused of killing eight people, six of them women of Asian descent, in shootings at three Atlanta-area massage businesses was indicted Tuesday on murder charges by two separate grand juries, and one prosecutor filed notice that she’ll also seek hate crime charges and the death penalty. A Fulton County grand jury indicted Robert Aaron Long, 22, in the March 16 slayings of Suncha Kim, 69; Soon Chung Park, 74; Hyun Jung Grant, 51; and Yong Ae Yue, 63. A separate grand jury in Cherokee County indicted Long for a separate shooting there that resulted in the killings of Xiaojie “Emily” Tan, 49; Daoyou Feng, 44; Delaina Yaun, 33; and Paul Michels, 54. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis also filed notice that she intends to seek hate crime charges and the death penalty against Long, who is white. The hate crime charges are based on the actual or perceived race, national origin, sex and gender of the four women killed, the notice says. There was no immediate filing in online court records in Cherokee County to indicate whether District Attorney Shannon Wallace intends to seek hate crimes charges or the death penalty. Georgia’s new hate crimes law does not provide for a stand-alone hate crime. After a person is convicted of an underlying crime, a jury must determine whether it’s a hate crime, which carries an additional penalty. The Fulton County indictment charges Long with four counts of murder, four counts of felony murder, five counts of assault with a deadly weapon, four counts of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony and one count of domestic terrorism, according to online records. The domestic terrorism charge says Long committed a series of illegal acts “which were interrelated by distinguishing characteristics, with the intent to cause serious bodily harm and to kill individuals and groups of individuals, and with the intent to intimidate the civilian population of this state and of its political subdivisions.” Four of the aggravated assault charges have to do with the shootings of the four victims who died. For the fifth, the indictment says Long pointed a gun at another woman, causing her “reasonable apprehension of immediately receiving a violent injury.” Willis’ notice of intent to seek hate crimes charges says she was targeted based on her actual or perceived sex and gender. Willis’ decision to seek the death penalty is a departure from her stance during her campaign to be district attorney last year. During a candidate forum last year, Willis answered yes when asked: “Will you commit to refuse to seek the death penalty?” “Last year I told the voters of Fulton County that I could not imagine a circumstance where I would seek (the death penalty),” Willis said at a news conference Tuesday. “Unfortunately, a case has arisen … that I believe warrants the ultimate penalty and we shall seek it.” The killings are eligible for the death penalty because each was committed while Long was in the act of committing another capital offense, namely the killings of the victims, Willis’ notice of intent says. Each killing was also “outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible, or inhuman in that it involved depravity of mind” and was committed during an act of domestic terrorism, the notice says. Police have said Long shot and killed four people, three of them women and two of Asian descent, at Young’s Asian Massage Parlor near Woodstock just before 5 p.m. March 16. He also shot and wounded a fifth person, investigators said. He then drove about 30 miles (50 kilometers) south to Atlanta, where he shot and killed three women at Gold Spa before going across the street to Aromatherapy Spa and fatally shooting another woman, police have said. All of the Atlanta victims were women of Asian descent. After the shootings at the two Atlanta spas, Long got back into his car and headed south on the interstate, police said. A woman called 911 from Gold Spa and told a dispatcher she had to speak quietly because she was hiding from the gunman. “Please come, OK?” she said, just above a whisper. Long’s parents called authorities to help after recognizing their son in still images from security video that the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office posted on social media. They provided cellphone information that allowed authorities to track their son to rural Crisp County, about 140 miles south of Atlanta. State troopers and sheriff’s deputies spotted his SUV on Interstate 75, and one of them forced Long to spin to a stop by bumping his vehicle. Long then surrendered to authorities. In an initial interview with investigators, Long claimed to have a “sex addiction.” His addiction involved endless hours of watching pornography and visiting spas for sex. He told law enforcement he initially planned to kill himself, but decided instead to “help” others with sex addiction by targeting spas. But those statements spurred outrage and widespread skepticism given the races of the victims. Officials said there was no evidence of illegal activity at the targeted massage parlors. Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said they had no previous complaints of criminal activity at the massage parlors. The only 911 call the Atlanta Police Department ever received involving either of the spas was a report of stolen keys. Long was described as a religious person by a former classmate at Sequoyah High School. He graduated in 2017. The classmate said Long’s dad was a pastor and Long had seemed “innocent” and “nerdy.” “He was very innocent seeming and wouldn’t even cuss,” the classmate told The Daily Beast. “He was sorta nerdy and didn’t seem violent from what I remember. He was a hunter and his father was a youth minister or pastor. He was big into religion.” Another classmate, Nico Straughan, 21, described a similar impression of Long. He said he thought Long was “super nice, super Christian, very quiet.” He brought a Bible to school every day and walked down the hallway with it in his hands, he said. “He went from one of the nicest kids I ever knew in high school to being on the news yesterday,” Straughan said. Social media posts from the Crabapple First Baptist Church show Long and his family have a lengthy history with the church. Long was also involved with the church’s Student Ministry Team as recently as 2018, according to minutes from a meeting of the elders. He was one of 11 people who served as members of the team, which “exists to see students receive Jesus Christ as Lord, and walk in Him, being rooted in the faith.” Long spent time in rehab for sex addiction in 2019 and 2020. The night before the shootings, his parents kicked him out of the house, reports said. Tyler Bayless said he shared a housing unit with Long for about five or six months at a rehab facility in Roswell, Georgia, called Maverick Recovery between August 2019 to January or February 2020. Long told Bayless he “relapsed” several times while he was in the facility by going to massage parlors for “sex acts.” “It was something that absolutely would torture him,” Bayless said of the addiction. Reported hate crimes against Asians in 16 of largest cities and counties in the U.S. increased 164 percent over last year, according to a new study from the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State University San Bernardino released this month. The area with the largest increase in reported anti-Asian hate crimes was New York City, which saw a 223 percent spike in early 2021, followed by San Francisco with a 140 percent increase and Los Angeles with an 80 percent increase. As CNN has previously reported, hate crimes against Asians often go underreported due to the lack of mandatory national reporting requirements by police agencies, but also because of other factors that could deter victims from calling the police, such as: longstanding distrust of law enforcement, language barriers and immigration status. (SD-Agencies) | 