The first images from the security cameras that captured the murderer of the Asian masseurs in Atlanta

Video captured by surveillance cameras enabled authorities to quickly identify and capture Robert Aaron Long., the main suspect in Tuesday’s attacks in Atlanta (Georgia) in which eight people died, including six women of Asian origin.

Long, a 21 year old from Woodstock, a suburb north of Atlanta, was filmed arriving at one of the massage centers attacked at 4:50 p.m. a few minutes before the first shoot.

The photos show him getting out of his car, a Hyundai Tucson negro from 2007, to enter a room called Asian massage parlor for young people, located north of Atlanta in Cherokke County.

There, shortly before 5:00 p.m. local time, the first shooting took place, in which four people were killed and a fifth was injured. The dead are three women, two of whom are Asian, and a man.

Shortly thereafter, around 5:45 p.m. local time, four more people were killed in attacks on two classrooms located in the same city block in Atlanta was allegedly carried out by Long, authorities said.

In the first (Gold Spa) three women died and in the last (Aromatherapy Spa) another woman. According to the Atlanta police, These four murdered women were of Asian descent.

Police said video footage showed the suspect’s vehicle in the Atlanta massage center area also at the time of the attacks. This, along with other video evidence, “This suggests that our suspect is most likely the same as the one from Cherokee County, who is in custody,” Atlanta police said in a statement.

Following the attack, Long was seen in southern Georgia, far from crime scenes, after Cherokee County Police released a bulletin with a description and license plates of the vehicle involved in the attacks.

He was arrested without incident around 8:30 p.m. after a roadside chase by Georgia State Police. and Crisp County Sheriff’s Deputies, who used a tactical driving maneuver to stop the suspect’s vehicle, the sheriff’s deputies later said.

Although the authorities declined to suggest a possible motive for the violence, the attacks led to the New York Police Department Counter-Terrorism Unit to Announce Additional Patrol Deployment in Asian Communities there as a precaution.

The violence in Georgia unfolded days after the President of the United States, Joe Biden, use a nationally televised speech to condemn a recent increase in hate crimes and discrimination against Asian Americans. Civil rights groups have suggested that former President Donald Trump contributed to the trend by repeatedly referring to the coronavirus as the “Chinese virus” because it first appeared there.

A spokesperson for the Atlanta Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said the agency was assisting police in Cherokee County and Atlanta.

Atlanta police said they were step up patrols around businesses similar to those attacked Tuesday night.

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