“I just want to hug her tightly,” Webb told CNN about his mother. “Give her a hug … hold her hand, hold her for a long time.”
Tan’s ex-husband Michael Webb says he just wants justice.
“I think what makes the difference for us … is that justice is done,” he said. “It was a massacre. We have a justice system and it will have to be held accountable. And our family will be involved in this process as much as we can.”
“We just want justice to be done and we hope it will be done.”
“The recognition that this was a crime based on hatred for a particular community is important and I think it is important for prosecutors and the police to consider this when making these charges,” Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said in an interview. CNN on Saturday.
Rallies across the country
Hundreds of protesters gathered at a rally in Atlanta on Saturday. A Florida resident, who drove eight hours to attend, told CNN that the violence “comes home”.
“I see my mother, my acquaintances, my colleagues,” said Timothy Phan. “This is an Asian issue, but above all, it is more than that, it is a human issue.”
“One of the biggest problems in fighting hate crimes is that many of the incidents go unreported,” said California Assembly member Al Muratsuchi, who introduced a bill to establish a hotline for hate crimes across the state. , to CNN. “We want to make it as easy and safe as possible for people to report these hate crime incidents.”
“The women who died looked like me, looked like my mother, looked like my aunts,” said Yuh-Line Niou, a member of the New York State Assembly, during a rally in Manhattan on Saturday. “They look like us.”
These are the victims of violence
Victims include Tan from Kennesaw, 49; Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33, from Acworth; Paul Andre Michels, 54, from Atlanta; and Daoyou Feng, 44, who was shot dead at Youngs Asian Massage. Elcias R. Hernandez-Ortiz, 30, from Acworth, was also shot at Youngs Asian Massage, but survived.
An hour after the first shooting, four Asian women were killed in Atlanta – three at the Gold Massage Spa and one at the Aroma Therapy Spa across the street, officials 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 a permanent resident of the United States, according to Kwangsuk Lee, South Korea’s deputy general consulate in Atlanta. The other three are considered Korean ethnic Americans, Lee told CNN on Friday.
Charlie Yoon Kim, president of the Korean American Association of Greater Atlanta, told CNN that he received calls from two families of victims who shared their financial difficulties after the sudden tragedy and “asked us if we could help them”.
“They were concerned with rent and utility fees and other practical costs, including the funeral process,” said Kim.
The association now plans to raise funds to support the victims’ families, added Kim.
“All Asian groups and associations are willing to come together to increase support for the people affected by this incident, so I hope that we can find some practical help for them,” Kim told CNN.
Grief and suffering left behind
“Frankly, I don’t have time to suffer for long,” wrote his son, Randy Park, on the page. “I will need to find out about my brother and I in the next few months, possibly next year. From now on, I was advised to move out of my current home in late March to save money and find a new place to live.”
“My grandmother was an angel, to have taken her away in such a horrible way is unbearable to think about. As an immigrant, all my grandmother ever wanted in life was to grow old with my grandfather and see her children and grandchildren live the life that she never lived, “says the page.
“We are still in shock at the violent murder of our mother, but through our grief we are making plans to honor her, bring our family together and solve her financial problems,” he wrote.
Hernandez-Ortiz was shot in the forehead and the bullet hit his lungs and stomach, wrote his wife, Flora Gonzalez Gomez, on the page, adding that he is now in intensive care at the hospital.
Suspect accused of murder
The suspect, Robert Aaron Long, 21, was arrested Tuesday night at a traffic stop 150 miles south of Atlanta.
He told police that he believed he had an addiction to sex and that he saw the spas as “a temptation … that he wanted to eliminate,” Cherokee County Sheriff Captain Jay Baker said on Wednesday.
He said the attacks were not racially motivated, Baker added. But the Atlanta police say it is too early to know the suspect’s motives.
Cherokee County District Attorney Shannon Wallace said the investigation is ongoing and the appropriate charges will be brought.
Long is being held without bail in Cherokee County, where he faces four counts of intentional homicide, one of attempted murder, one of aggravated assault, and five of using a firearm when committing a crime.
He was charged with four counts of murder in connection with the two shootings at a spa in Atlanta, according to Atlanta police.
CNN’s Paul Vercammen, Jason Hanna, Madeline Holcombe and Yoonjung Seo contributed to this report.