The other three are considered Korean Americans, Kwangsuk Lee, the deputy consulate general of the Republic of Korea in Atlanta, told CNN on Friday.
South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has decided not to release any more information about the victims, including their names, “to protect the victims’ privacy and respect their family’s requests,” said Lee. The South Korean Consulate in Atlanta received information on the four victims of Korean descent from the Atlanta police on Friday, he said.
Some officials have called for hate crime charges against the suspect, which officials said he may have traveled to carry out further attacks when he was arrested.
South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has called for an investigation of the case to be conducted as soon as possible. The Ministry plans to provide all necessary support for the funeral process.
In Cherokee County, the suspect faces four counts of intentional homicide, one of attempted murder, one of aggravated assault, and five of using a firearm to commit a crime. He was also charged with four counts of murder in connection with the two shootings at a spa in Atlanta, local police said.
Authorities condemn growing anti-Asian hate crimes
Atlanta police chief Rodney Bryant said it was too early to know the suspect’s motive, and Cherokee County District Attorney Shannon Wallace said the investigation was ongoing and the appropriate charges would be brought.
But retired FBI special supervisor sergeant Jim Clemente told CNN’s Erin Burnett that the level of planning seen in his actions shows that the suspect was motivated by more than just a “bad day”.
“His actions show that he was targeting a certain type of person on this specific day, and not just in one location, but he went to a second and third location,” said Clemente.
While in Atlanta, Biden and Harris did not explicitly state that they considered the shootings to be a hate crime. But they noted that, whatever the sniper’s motivation, deaths occur at a time when hate crimes are on the rise against Asian Americans.
“The conversation we had today with leaders (Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders), and that we are listening to across the country, is that hatred and violence are often hidden from everyone. We often find silence “said Biden. “This has been true throughout our history, but that has to change because our silence is complicity.”
Senator Tammy Duckworth told Anderson Cooper of CNN that she was not surprised by the attack that killed so many Asian women.
“We have been marching towards increasingly violent hate crimes against AAPIs in the past year,” said Duckworth.
Victims leave families behind: ‘She was one of my best friends’
The names of all eight people killed were released.
Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33, from Acworth; Paul Andre Michels, 54, from Atlanta; Xiaojie Tan, 49, from Kennesaw; and Daoyou Feng, 44, were shot dead at Youngs Asian Massage in Cherokee County.
Elcias R. Hernandez-Ortiz, 30, from Acworth, was also shot at Youngs Asian Massage, but survived.
About 30 miles away and within 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.
Atlanta’s four victims 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.
Of those four, three died of gunshot wounds to the head and one died of a gunshot wound to the chest, the coroner’s office said.
“She was one of my best friends and the biggest influence on who we are today,” wrote Park.
The GoFundMe page, created for Grant’s two children, raised more than $ 2 million from more than 50,000 donors on Saturday morning. GoFundMe told CNN that the page was verified; Park did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.
The page says that the donated money will pay for food, rent and other monthly bills. He says the brothers now only have each other in the United States, with all the other relatives in South Korea.
“Losing her put a new lens on my eyes about the amount of hatred that exists in our world,” wrote Park.
“About an hour later … I heard the shots. I didn’t see anything, I just started to think it was in the room where my wife was,” he told the newspaper.
“(The sniper) took the most valuable thing I had in my life,” said Gonzalez. “He just left me in pain.”
CNN’s Jason Hanna, Gregory Lemos, Audrey Ash, Nicole Chavez, Gisela Crespo, Nicquel Ellis, Jamiel Lynch, Paul P. Murphy, Raja Razek, Casey Tolan, Amir Vera, Amanda Watts and Holly Yan contributed to this report.