According to a report, the 21-year-old man suspected of killing eight people, six of them Asian, in three massage parlors on the Atlanta subway, professed a passion for guns and for God.
Robert Aaron Long, of Woodstock, Georgia, was arrested without incident Tuesday night about 150 miles south of Atlanta and charged with homicide, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.
Information about Long is scarce, but the Daily Beast reported that a slogan from an Instagram account that appeared to belong to the suspect but was no longer active on Wednesday morning read: “Pizza, guns, drums, music, family and God. This pretty much sums up my life. It’s a pretty good life. “
A student who graduated from Sequoyah High School with Long in 2017 told the press on condition of anonymity: “He was a very innocent father and didn’t even argue.
“He was a bit of a nerd and didn’t look violent from what I remember. He was a hunter and his father was a minister or youth pastor. He was very fond of religion “, added the ex-partner.
A 2018 video on Crabapple First Baptist Church’s Facebook page includes Long discussing his Christian journey to baptism, according to the Daily Beast.
“As many of you will remember, when I was eight I thought I would become a Christian and I was baptized during that time. And I remember a lot of the reasons for that being my Sunday school class friends doing this, ”Long says in the video, which was deleted Wednesday morning.
“And after that time, there was no root fruit that is our salvation,” he says, adding that as a seventh-grader, he attended a group of young people and a lecturer was discussing the biblical story of the prodigal son.
“The son leaves and wastes everything he has and lives completely for himself and then, when he finds that he wants to eat pork, he realizes that something was wrong and he goes back to his father and his Dad runs to him and hugs him, ”he says, according to the report.
“And by the grace of God I was able to make the connection there and realize that this is a story between what happened to me and God. I ran away living completely for myself, and he still loves me, and that’s when I was saved. “
In a statement, church elders told Heavy.com: “We are saddened to learn of the tragic news of the multiple deaths in the Atlanta area. We are heartbroken by all involved.
“We mourn the victims and their families and continue to pray for them. In addition, we are distressed by the Long family and we continue to pray for them, ”they added.
The suspect’s family did not respond to calls from the Daily Beast for comment.
Authorities said Long is the suspect in the shootings at Young’s Asian massage parlor in Cherokee County, which left four people dead and one injured, and two more shots in northeast Atlanta that went causing four more deaths.
Among the victims, whose names have not yet been released, were six Asian women, a white woman and a white man, officials said.
According to the Korea Herald, South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that four people of Korean descent were part of the killings.
“He appears to be the same suspect,” Captain Jay Baker of Sheriff Cherokee’s office told the newspaper, adding that surveillance footage indicates Long is the suspect in the three shootings.
Police stressed it was too early to cite the reasons for the bloodbath, but the attacks come amid a wave of violence directed at the Asian American community.
