Less than a day after eight people were shot and killed at the Atlanta area spas – 6 of them Asian women – a Georgia official told reporters that the suspect in the mass shooting was having a “bad day”. Now, this officer is reviewing Facebook posts that appear to belong to him and that promote a racist-language t-shirt about China and COVID-19.
“He was quite fed up and half at the end of his rope. Yesterday was a very bad day for him and that is what he did,” said Jay Baker, Cherokee County Sheriff’s communications director, on Wednesday, during a Collective interview. explaining the alleged motives of Robert Aaron Long, 21, currently in custody for the shooting on Tuesday night.
Officials said the shootings “did not appear” to be racially motivated, amid growing concern across the country on violence against Asian Americans and the Pacific Islands. A study released last week found that hate crimes against Asian Americans increased by about 150% in 2020, disproportionately affecting women.
Authorities, however, said the suspect had problems with sex addiction, targeting spas to “end the temptation”.
“We’ve all been through bad days. But we don’t go to three Asian companies and shoot Asian employees,” California representative Ted Lieu tweeted after the press conference. He urged the FBI to conduct an independent investigation.
A few hours after the briefing, internet detectives discovered Baker’s apparent Facebook posts from April 2020, which appear to show him buying and promoting a T-shirt that called COVID-19 “IMPORTED CHY-NA VIRUS.”
“I loved my shirt! Take yours while they last,” says a post. The shirt seems to echo the old President Donald Trump characterization of COVID-19 as the “China Virus” and “Kung Flu”.
At the time of posting, Asian Americans were already expressing fears of a increased crime against the community due to the racist rhetoric surrounding the pandemic.
According to the Associated Press, the “Jay Baker” account, which was deleted on Wednesday night, featured several photos of Captain Jay Baker of the Cherokee County sheriff dating from months ago, including one he is in. uniform outside the sheriff’s office.
The posts came when many members of the Asian-American community expressed concern that the shooting was not being treated as a hate crime. Numerous community members said the department did not appear to be able to conduct a fair investigation.
“Seeing this post is disturbing and outrageous. It speaks of the structural racism we are all fighting against,” Vincent Pan, co-executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action, a civil rights organization that works to combat anti-Asian hate crimes, he told the AP. “Along with the comments coming from the press conference, it does not give community members the confidence that our experiences and the pain and suffering we are feeling are being taken seriously, at least by this particular person.”
Baker and the sheriff’s office did not immediately respond to CBS News’s request for comment.
Vice President Kamala Harris, who is the first South Asian American woman to be elected to that post, said she and President Biden “mourn the loss” after the mass shooting.
“I want to tell our Asian American community that we are with you and we understand how it scared, shocked and outraged everyone,” she said.
Just four days before the attacks, Biden condemned the rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans in his first prime-time speech to the nation.
“Many times, we turn against each other,” he said. “Cruel hate crimes against Americans of Asian origin, who were attacked, persecuted, accused and made into scapegoats.”
“It is wrong, it is not American and it must stop.”