After the spa attacks, officers handcuffed the victim’s anguished husband for four hours

ACWORTH, Georgia – Mario González heard the shooting from inside Young’s Asian Massage and immediately worried about his wife, who was in another room. But before he could see how she was, he said, the police handcuffed him and detained him for about four hours while working to determine the sniper’s identity.

During that time, the police told him: His wife, Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33, had been killed.

Mr. González described the March 16 shooting and the confusing hours that followed in a video interview and a story published by the Spanish-language news site Mundo Hispánico. He expressed his frustration with the police for detaining him, suggesting that he could have been mistreated for being Latin, and shared his anguish over the loss of his wife.

“They took what was most precious in my life,” González said of the sniper, before restraining himself and correcting the tenses. “That i had.”

The attack at Young’s Asian Massage was part of a series of shots at three spas in and around Atlanta. Ms. Yaun was among eight people killed by a sniper who intentionally targeted employees of these companies, police officials said.

Representatives of the Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to messages requesting comments on Sunday, but González’s accusations came after the agency had already been examined after a Sheriff’s Office spokesman described the shooter as having “a very bad day. . “

The spokesman, Captain Jay Baker, was no longer the office’s public representative in the case, and the sheriff, Frank Reynolds, apologized and defended Captain Baker for not having any intention of disrespecting the victims or their families. “We are sorry for any headaches that Captain Baker’s words may have caused,” said Sheriff Reynolds.

Efforts to contact González in the past few days have also been unsuccessful.

Tuesday was a meeting night for González and Yaun, and the couple, who got married last spring, went after work to Young’s Asian Massage in Acworth, a suburb of Atlanta. They arrived shortly before filming began, González said in the video interview, and were taken to separate rooms for massages.

Authorities said Robert Aaron Long, 21, started his violence shortly before 5 pm Tuesday at Young’s, which is located in a small shopping center between a boutique and a beauty salon.

González told Mundo Hispánico that he heard the shots, but was too afraid to open the door to see what was going on. He feared the bullets would fly into the room where his wife had been taken.

After Cherokee County sheriff’s deputies arrived, he was detained and held for about four hours, González said, according to Mundo Hispánico.

He said he did not see his wife when he was taken out of the spa, and the police would not let him near her. Finally, he said, the police told him that his wife had been killed.

“And they knew that I was the husband,” González said of the authorities. He held a photo of himself with his wife while he spoke. “They gave me the news that she was dead.”

He wondered why the authorities took so long to tell him that his wife had died and wondered why they had detained him in the first place.

“Maybe because I’m Mexican, I don’t know,” he said. “Because the truth is, they treated me badly.” He showed the camera the marks left on his arm by the handcuffs put on him by policemen.

Mr. González met Ms. Yaun at a Waffle House restaurant, where he was a customer and she was a waitress. Ms. Yaun was a single mother, raising a 13-year-old son. The couple married last year and had a daughter, who is now 8 months old. “What I need most now is support,” said González in the interview.

After the shooting at the Acworth spa, officials said Long continued his attack. The shooting was reported at two other massage parlors close to each other in Atlanta.

His car was located two hours later, about 150 miles south of Atlanta, in Crisp County, Georgia, officials said.

Investigators said that Long appeared to have been motivated by an addiction to sex. He aimed at spas as an outlet for something “he shouldn’t be doing,” Captain Baker said at a news conference last week.

Mr. Long was charged with eight counts of murder. On Sunday, the Crabapple First Baptist Church, the conservative congregation that had been the center of his life, formally removed him from membership in the church, saying that he “could no longer claim that he is truly a regenerated believer in Jesus Christ.”

At Sunday services, the first since the turmoil, the sermon was dedicated to pain and sadness, including biblical passages of loss and regret. The names of the eight victims were read aloud.

“All of our hearts are broken,” said Jerry Dockery, the senior pastor, adding that the congregation was destroyed by the “hatred and violence” of the attacks.

It was a sense of devastation that González struggled with while thinking of raising his stepson and his daughter without Mrs. Yaun.

“That killer,” he said in the interview, “just left me in pain.”

Rick Rojas reported by Acworth and Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio of New York. Jack Healy contributed reporting by Milton, Ga.