“I just want to hold her tight,” Webb told CNN about her mother. “Give her a hug … hold her hand, hug her for a long time.”
Tan’s ex-husband, Michael Webb, says he just wants justice.
“I think what makes a difference to us … is that justice is done,” he said. “It was a bloodbath. We have a legal system and he will have to be held accountable. And our family will be involved in the process as much as we can.”
“We just want justice to be done and we are hopeful that it will happen.”
“Recognizing that this is a crime committed out of hatred for a particular community is important, and I think it is important that prosecutors and police consider filing the charges,” said Keisha Lance Bottoms, Mayor of Atlanta, told CNN on Saturday.
Meetings across the country
Hundreds of protesters gathered in a rally in Atlanta on Saturday. One Florida resident, who drove eight hours to attend, told CNN the violence ‘hit’.
“I see my mother, I see my acquaintances, my colleagues,” Timothy Phan said. “It’s an Asian affair, but it’s more than that, it’s a human issue.”
“One of the biggest problems in combating hate crime is that too many of the incidents are not recorded,” said Al Muratsuchi, a member of the California House of Representatives, who introduced a bill to draft a direct hate crime hotline. , told CNN. “We want to make it as easy and safe for people as possible to report these incidents of hate crime.”
“The women who died, they looked just like me, they looked like my mother, they looked like my aunts,” Yuh-Line Niou, a member of the New York State House of Representatives, said at a rally in Manhattan on Saturday. “They look like us.”
These are the victims of violence
The victims include 49-year-old Tan of Kennesaw; Delaina Ashley Yaun (33) of Acworth; Paul Andre Michels (54) of Atlanta; and Daoyou Feng, 44, who was fatally shot at Youngs Asian Massage. Elcias R. Hernandez-Ortiz (30) of Acworth was also shot at Youngs Asian Massage but survived.
Within an hour of the first shooting, four Asian women were killed in Atlanta – three in the Gold Massage Spa and one in the Aroma Therapy Spa across the street, authorities said. They were: Soon Chung Park, 74; Hyun Jung Grant, 51; Suncha Kim, 69; and Yong Ae Yue, 63, according to the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office.
One of the four victims in Atlanta was a South Korean citizen and permanent resident of the United States, according to Kwangsuk Lee, South Korea’s Deputy Consulate General in Atlanta. The other three are believed to be Americans of Korean ethnicity, Lee told CNN on Friday.
Charlie Yoon Kim, president of the Korean American Association of Greater Atlanta, told CNN he received phone calls from two families of victims who shared their financial problems after the sudden tragedy and “asked us if we could help them.”
“They were worried about rent and utilities and other practical costs, including the funeral process,” Kim said.
The association now plans to raise funds to support the victims’ families, Kim added.
“All Asian groups and associations are willing to take part in supporting the people affected by this incident, so I hope we can find practical help for them,” Kim told CNN.
Sadness and hardship left behind
“Honestly, I do not have much time to mourn,” her son, Randy Park, wrote on the page. “I will have to determine the life situation for my brother and I for the next few months, possibly years. From now on, I was advised to move out of my current home by March March to save money and look for a new home. place of residence. ‘
“My grandmother was an angel. It is unbearable to think of her being taken away in such a horrible way. As an immigrant, all my grandmother ever wanted in life was to grow old with my grandfather and to see how her children and grandchildren the life she could never have, ”reads the page.
“We are still in shock over the violent murder of our mother, but through our grief we are making plans to commemorate her, bring our family together and solve her financial affairs,” he wrote.
Hernandez-Ortiz was shot in the forehead and the bullet moved in his lungs and in his stomach, his wife, Flora Gonzalez Gomez, wrote on the page, adding that he is now in intensive care in the hospital.
Suspect charged with murder
The suspect, 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long, was arrested Tuesday night in a traffic hall 200 miles south of Atlanta.
He told police he believed he had a sex addiction and that he saw the spas “a temptation … that he wants to eliminate”, said Capt. Jay Baker, Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office, said Wednesday.
He claimed the attacks were not racially motivated, Baker added. But Atlanta police say it is still too early to know the motive of the suspect.
Cherokee County District Attorney Shannon Wallace said the investigation is ongoing and appropriate charges will be filed.
Long is being held without bail in Cherokee County, where he is facing four counts of malicious murder, one count of attempted murder, one count of aggravated assault and five counts of using a firearm while committing an offense. has.
According to Atlanta police, he was charged with four counts of murder in connection with the two spa shootings in Atlanta.
CNN’s Paul Vercammen, Jason Hanna, Madeline Holcombe and Yoonjung Seo contributed to this report.