The suspect in the shooting deaths of six Asian American women and two others at state of Georgia massage parlors has been strongly condemned by the church he and his family had attended for years.Robert Aaron Long is the sole suspect charged in all eight deaths at three locations in the Atlanta area.“We want to be clear that this extreme and wicked act is nothing less than rebellion against our Holy God and His Word. Aaron’s actions are antithetical to everything that we believe and teach as a church,” Crabapple First Baptist Church said Friday in a statement.“In the strongest possible terms, we condemn the actions of Aaron Long as well as his stated reasons for carrying out this wicked plan,” said the church, located in the city of Milton.Authorities in the southern U.S. state of Georgia say suspect Long claimed Tuesday’s shootings were not racially motivated but were instead a result of “sex addiction” issues.Julie Tran holds her phone during a candlelight vigil in Garden Grove, California, on March 17, 2021 to unite against the recent spate of violence targeting Asians and to express grief and outrage after an Atlanta shooting left eight people dead.Cherokee County Sheriff’s Captain Jay Baker told reporters that Long “apparently has an issue, what he considers a sex addiction, and sees these locations as something that allows him to go to these places. And it’s a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate.”Officials said Long may have been on his way to Florida to commit more shootings when he was arrested.Atlanta Police Chief Rodney Bryant said it was too early to classify the shootings as hate crimes.Baker was replaced as spokesman of the sheriff’s department after being criticized on social media Wednesday for telling reporters that Long had “a really bad day” and for earlier Facebook posts that disparaged people of Asian descent. Without explaining why Baker had been replaced, Cherokee County Communication Director Erika Neldner said in a statement Thursday she would assume the duties of interacting with the media about matters involving the Cherokee County Sheriff’s investigation into the killings.In Facebook posts last March and April, Baker encouraged followers to buy an anti-Asian T-shirt that said the coronavirus was an “imported virus from Chy-na,” repeating language similar to what then-President Donald Trump began to use after the outbreak began.  “Place your order while they last,” Baker said in one of the Facebook posts that he has not commented on. President Joe Biden said he was withholding judgment about the motivation behind the shootings until there is more information.”I am making no connection at this moment of the motivation of the killer. I am waiting for an answer from — as the investigation proceeds — from the FBI and from the Justice Department,” he said before hosting a bilateral meeting with the prime minister of Ireland. “I’ll have more to say when the investigation is completed.”Biden has ordered flags flown at half-staff through March 22 to honor the victims. He and Vice President Kamala Harris are scheduled to travel to Atlanta Friday to meet with Asian American leaders.Killings of 6 Asian Americans in Atlanta Spurs Debate Over Hate CrimesActing as ‘penalty enhancers,’ most state hate crime laws call for an increase in sentencing when an underlying crime is motivated by hateThe shootings come amid a rising number of attacks against people of Asian descent in the United States.Hate crimes against Asian Americans jumped by 149% in 16 major U.S. cities from 2019 to 2020, according to a study released this month by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism. Overall hate crimes fell 7% during the same period.The Asian American Coalition for Education (AACE) said in a statement Thursday it “strongly condemns the increasing violence and rising hate incidents targeting Asian Americans in recent months” and called for a multifaceted approach to address the disturbing trend.The AACE urged governments at all levels commit sufficient law enforcement resources to protect Asian Americans, begin investigations to identify causes of such attacks, and launch collaborative campaigns to improve education to discourage violence. The organization also called on politicians to “dissociate the pandemic with any ethnic groups because Asian Americans did not cause the COVID-19 pandemic.”The attack was the sixth mass killing this year in the United States, and the deadliest since the August 2019 Dayton, Ohio, shooting that left nine people dead, according to a database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University.
 
…