People take part in a rally against anti-Asian hate crimes in San Mateo, California, the United States, on Feb. 27, 2021. (Xinhua/Wu Xiaoling)
The carnage added to the already high tensions around violence and discrimination targeting the Asian American community during the coronavirus pandemic. President Joe Biden said anti-Asian violence is "very troubling." Vice President Kamala Harris offered her support for and solidarity with the Asian American community in light of the tragedy.
WASHINGTON, March 17 -- The Joe Biden administration and congressional Democrats on Wednesday condemned the exacerbating anti-Asian violence in the United States in the wake of a series of shooting incidents in Atlanta on Tuesday that killed eight people, many of whom were Asians.
Rodney Bryant, acting chief of the Atlanta Police Department, told a news briefing that the investigation was still in the "very early" stage, and that investigators cannot determine at the moment that the shooting spree was a hate crime, although multiple calls received by the police department sought to confirm that conclusion.
Police on Tuesday evening arrested the suspect, 21-year-old white man from Georgia, Robert Aaron Long, who during an interview with law enforcement at the night claimed responsibility for the shooting incidents at three massage parlors in the Atlanta metropolitan area. Eight people, six Asians and two Whites, were killed.
Long claimed that the attacks were not racially motivated, and that he had a "sexual addiction" and saw the massage parlors as a "temptation" that he wanted to "eliminate," according to authorities, adding that Long, when caught, was on the way to Florida, where he planned to commit similar crimes.
The carnage added to the already high tensions around violence and discrimination targeting the Asian American community during the coronavirus pandemic.
President Biden told reporters on Tuesday that he has been briefed on the shootings by the attorney general and the FBI director, and that even as he reserved his comments on the possible motive behind the acts due to an ongoing probe, he found anti-Asian violence in the country "very troubling."
