Authorities on Wednesday released the names of some of the victims of Tuesday’s Atlanta-area massage parlor shootings. The identifications came as those who knew the man who admitted he pulled the trigger shed new light on the shooter’s possible motives — and what may have led him to suddenly go on a rampage.
Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33, of Acworth; Paul Andre Michels, 54, of Atlanta; Xiaojie Tan, 49, of Kennesaw; and Daoyou Feng, 44, were all shot and killed at Young’s Asian Massage in Acworth, Georgia. Elcias R. Hernandez-Ortiz, 30, of Acworth, was seriously injured.
WSB-TV reports that two of the victims were Asian women.
Tan owned the business and died one day before she would have turned 50 years old, USA Today reported. She was born in China and moved to the United States to join Michael Webb, an American businessman and contractor whom she met in China while he was traveling for work. Webb and Tan married; Webb adopted Tan’s daughter. Though the couple since split up, they remained close raising their child. Webb helped remodel Tan’s spa last year during COVID-19 shutdowns. Tan, who went by “Jay” for short, or sometimes by the American name Emily, owned multiple businesses in the area, the newspaper said. She was raised in a Catholic family in China; her family is now planning a Catholic funeral. A friend and customer told USA Today that Tan “was the sweetest person you’d ever meet . . . [m]y heart was in my throat the second I heard of it. It still doesn’t seem real.”
The New York Times reported that Yaun was a customer at the massage parlor; her husband was injured but survived by locking himself in a room as the killing spree continued. Citing friends and relatives, WXIA-TV reported that Yaun and her husband were married last August and had booked a date at the spa; they were in separate rooms when gunfire erupted. Yaun leaves behind an infant child with her husband.
A GoFundMe page has been established for Elcias Hernandez-Ortiz’s medical expenses. The site, which says it was launched by Hernandez-Ortiz’s wife, explained the extent of his injuries.
“He is at the hospital in intensive care,” the site says. “He was shot in the forehead down to his lungs and into his stomach. Help us raise money to cover for my husband’s medical bills. Please pray for my family and the family’s that were affected by this shooting. Anything will greatly help our family.”
The family told WSB-TV that Hernandez-Ortiz was shot in the parking lot.
A similar page that was recently active for Delaina Yaun’s family but has since stopped taking donations; it is immediately unclear why.
Michels was an Army veteran and longtime Atlanta-area resident, the Associated Press reported. He recently worked installing security systems and may have been at the spa performing work; he may also have been speaking with the owner about opening a spa himself, relatives said. Michels leaves behind a wife of 30 years, according to a GoFundMe page.
In addition to the victims named above, three more died at Atlanta’s Gold Spa; one more died at Atlanta’s Aromatherapy Spa. Those two spas are across the street from one another.
On Friday, the Fulton County, Ga. Medical Examiner’s Office identified those four additional victims and their respective causes of death as follows: Soon Chung Park, 74; Hyun Jung Grant, 51; and Yong Yue, 63, all died of a separate gunshot wound to the head. Suncha Kim, 69, died of gunshot wounds to the chest. Both the Atlanta Police Department and the medical examiner’s office said all four were Asian women.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families who were impacted from yesterday’s senseless violence,” the Acworth Police Department posted on Facebook while noting jurisdictional issues. “We mourn the loss of any life. While the location of one of the shootings has an Acworth address, it is not within the city limits of Acworth. The Cherokee County Sheriff’s Department is handling that investigation.”
Admitted shooter Robert Aaron Long, 21, is charged with four counts of murder and one count of aggravated assault in Cherokee County, Ga. He is also charged with four counts of murder in Atlanta, WSB-TV reported.
According to a news conference held Wednesday by a group of Georgia officials who spanned multiple relevant jurisdictions, Long had a “sexual addiction” which he sought to control by murdering multiple people in multiple locations.
“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,” a spokesperson for the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office said during the news conference.
CNN reported Thursday morning that Long had been kicked out of his parents’ house the night before the shooting after “frequently spending hours on end watching pornography online,” as the report put it. The report was cited to an anonymous law enforcement source and 911 calls.
Tyler Bayless, who identified himself to CNN as a “roommate” who lived with Long at a Roswell, Ga. addiction treatment center called Maverick Recovery, said Long “would often go on tangents about his interpretation of the Bible.” Bayless said Long was “torture[d]” by a sexual addiction but at one point “relapsed” and had “gone to massage parlors explicitly to engage in sex acts.”
Another roommate who CNN did not identify also reportedly told the cable channel that Long was in treatment but had not talked to him in a while. That unnamed roommate reportedly called 911 after seeing surveillance images of Long which authorities disseminated online and through the press.
CNN also confirmed that Facebook removed Long’s Instagram profile.
“Pizza, guns, drums, music, family, and God. This pretty much sums up my life. It’s a pretty good life,” a screen shot of the profile obtained by CNN reportedly read.
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (D) said the spas Long admitted he targeted were not on her police department’s radar and were operating legally.
As Law&Crime reported separately on Thursday, Atlanta authorities said they were planning a “separate” and “different” investigation into the shootings in their jurisdiction and refused to comment on Long’s motives.
Editor’s note: this piece has been updated since its initial publication to officially identify the four victims killed in Atlanta and to provide additional details about the others.
[Image via the Crisp County, Ga. Jail]
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