On Tuesday, prosecutors in Georgia said they would seek the death penalty for the man accused of fatally shooting eight people at Atlanta-area spas, charging the suspect with committing hate crimes. 22-year-old Robert Aaron Long was indicted on murder charges in the March 16 killings of four women in Fulton County, Georgia, as well as on aggravated assault and domestic terrorism charges. He was previously charged with four counts of murder and one count of aggravated assault in Cherokee County, about 40 miles north of Atlanta.
In a court filing, Fulton County prosecutor Fani Willis said Long had targeted four women in Atlanta because of their race, national origin and gender. In a separate filing, Willis said she would seek the death penalty against Long.
Long told investigators a sex addiction drove him to commit the killings and indicated he frequented spas in the area. Four people were killed and another wounded at Young’s Asian Massage in Cherokee County. Two Asian-American women were among those killed, along with a white woman and a white man. An hour later in Atlanta, police officers responding to a robbery report arrived at the Gold Spa beauty salon to find three women shot dead. The officers were then called to a separate spa across the street where another woman was found fatally shot. All four women killed in Atlanta were of of Asian descent.
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