.cms-textAlign-left{text-align:left;}.cms-textAlign-center{text-align:center;}.cms-textAlign-right{text-align:right;}.cms-magazineStyles-smallCaps{font-variant:small-caps;}“We should be treating hate crimes as such,” he said in Times Square on Wednesday. “And make no mistake, these women were targeted on the basis of their race.”
“Whether it is senseless violence that we’ve seen play out in our streets, or more targeted violence like we saw yesterday, a crime against any community is a crime against us all,” Bottoms said at a news conference.
the deadly shootings is ongoing. A 21-year-old male suspect in the shootings was taken into custody Tuesday night following a police chase.

The shootings Tuesday came amid heightened concern about a rise in hate crimes against people of Asian descent in recent months and immediately posed questions about why the particular businesses were targeted. At least one victim survived the attack but remains hospitalized.
Rep. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.) blamed former President Donald Trump for stoking some of the anti-Asian sentiment. The former president and some of his aides repeatedly used the racist term “kung flu” in reference to the coronavirus and frequently labeled it the “China virus.” Trump invoked the latter as recently as Tuesday night in a Fox News interview that aired as news was starting to emerge about the shootings.
“Whatever the motivation was for this guy, we know that many of the victims, [the] majority of the victims were Asian,” she said. “We also know that this is an issue that is happening across the country. It is unacceptable. It is hateful, and it has to stop.”
Captain Jay Baker of the Cherokee County sheriff’s office said that the man claims to have a sex addiction and that the businesses were a “temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate.”
Yang’s wife, Evelyn, similarly dismissed the idea that the locations of the shootings can be separated from the victim’s identities.
“It is still early on, but those were comments that he made,” Baker said, adding that investigators have not found a potential political or religious motivation for the attacks.

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said she has been in contact with the White House in the aftermath of the shootings. | Andrea Smith/AP Photo
“For as tragic as this was on yesterday, it could have been worse,“ Bottoms said. “It is very likely that there would have been more victims on yesterday.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki likewise told reporters Wednesday there’s “no question” Trump contributed to “perceptions of the Asian-American community that are inaccurate, unfair [and] have elevated threats against Asian Americans.”underscores the need for additional resources to combat anti-Asian hate crimes and that he did not believe that race was a non-factor in Georgia.

The Atlanta mayor said she has been in contact with the White House in the aftermath of the shootings, and the Biden administration said early Wednesday that the president had been briefed on the “horrific” situation.
The man, Robert Aaron Long, has been charged with four counts of murder and one count of aggravated assault in Cherokee County, part of the Atlanta metro area where one of the businesses was located. Additional charges are expected to follow related to the two shootings that occurred within the city.
Bottoms said that regardless of what fueled the violence, the fear and outrage it induced needs to be addressed.
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms on Wednesday condemned the attacks on three Atlanta-area spas that left eight people dead, including six Asian women.
“We feel that we have been invisible,” Meng, who is of Tawainese descent, said on MSNBC. “We are so hurt about what happened last night in Atlanta, but also hurt about this yearslong-worth of hateful incidents and hate crimes that have skyrocketed across the country.
“If you target massage parlors you are targeting Asian women,” she wrote in a tweet. “I appreciate all the supportive sentiment out there but let’s be clear in calling this what it is — a hate crime.”