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Atlanta Shooting Spree: What We Know About the Victims
![a group of people holding a sign: A vigil in the Chinatown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., on Wednesday remembered the victims of the Atlanta shootings, who included six women of Asian descent.]({"default":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB1eIRUn.img?h=0&w=600&m=6&q=60&u=t&o=f&l=f"})
© Shuran Huang for The New York TimesA vigil in the Chinatown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., on Wednesday remembered the victims of the Atlanta shootings, who included six women of Asian descent.Eight people were killed at three massage parlors in Atlanta and nearby Cherokee County on Tuesday. The suspect in the shootings, Robert Aaron Long, has been charged with eight counts of murder and one count of aggravated assault.
Six of the victims were of Asian descent and two were white. Seven were women.
Four have been publicly identified so far, and officials with the Atlanta Police Department said on Thursday they would not release the names of the four victims who were killed in the other two massage businesses until family members were notified.
![a close up of a person looking at the camera: Xiaojie Tan]({"default":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB1eJ8d1.img?h=169&w=300&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f"})
© via Kennesaw Police Department Xiaojie TanHere is what we know so far about the victims.
‘Just the sweetest, kindest, most giving person’
![a person standing in front of a car posing for the camera: Delaina Ashley Yaun, left, with her sister, Dana Toole.]({"default":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB1eJBtC.img?h=169&w=300&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f&x=246&y=91"})
© via Dana Toole Delaina Ashley Yaun, left, with her sister, Dana Toole.Xiaojie Tan, the hardworking owner of Young’s Asian Massage in Acworth, Ga., made her patrons feel at home and treated her friends like family, one longtime customer said on Thursday. Ms. Tan died two days ahead of her 50th birthday.
One of her employees, Daoyou Feng, was also among those left dead on Tuesday.
Greg Hynson, the longtime customer of Ms. Tan, described her as “just the sweetest, kindest, most giving person.” He last saw her last weekend, he said, when stopping by her spa to say hello.
Ms. Tan, whose friends called her Emily, was originally from China and had a daughter she was tremendously proud of, he said. Mr. Hynson, a former competitive weight lifter, had regular appointments for massages to ease his upper neck trauma, and he and Ms. Tan had been friends for years.
![a close up of a man smiling for the camera: Paul Andre Michels]({"default":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB1eJumv.img?h=169&w=300&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f"})
© via Kennesaw Police Department Paul Andre Michels“It just doesn’t seem real that she’s not around,” he said. When he heard about the shooting, he rushed to the scene and was horrified to see police lights flashing from a block away. “I was in a state of shock,” he sa
Ms. Feng, 44, had just started working at the spa in the past few months, Mr. Hynson said.
“They welcomed you,” he said. “If you were a friend of Emily’s, you were a friend of theirs.”
Ms. Tan and Ms. Feng were among four victims killed inside Young’s Asian Massage. The others were Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33, of Acworth; and Paul Andre Michels, 54, whose brother said he lived in Tucker. Elcias R. Hernandez-Ortiz, 30, of Acworth, was injured in the attack and remained in critical condition on Thursday, family members said.
Officials with the Atlanta Police Department said on Thursday that they would not release the names of the four victims who were killed in the other two massage businesses until their family members had been notified, and that they were working with South Korean consular officials to do so.
![a person wearing a hat and smiling at the camera: Elcias Hernandez-Ortiz]({"default":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB1eJnAS.img?h=169&w=300&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f&x=322&y=205"})
© via Flor Gonzalez Elcias Hernandez-OrtizAlthough the gunman was apparently targeting employees of the massage parlors, the victims also included customers.
A patron in the line of fire
Delaina Ashley Yaun was looking forward to a date with her husband on Tuesday afternoon. The couple chose a relaxing massage at Young’s Asian Massage in a modest shopping center outside of Atlanta — a spa she had never visited before, according to relatives.
She and her husband arrived shortly before the shooting began. She was killed, but her husband survived, locked in a nearby room as gunshots rang out, according to Dane Toole, Ms. Yaun’s half sister.
“He’s not OK,” Ms. Toole said about her sister’s husband. “He’s taking it hard.”
Ms. Yaun, one of four siblings who grew up in the area, had worked as a server at a Waffle House restaurant. She raised a 13-year-old son as a single mother and had an 8-month-old daughter, family members said.
“It was just all about family,” Ms. Toole said. “Whatever we’d do, we’d do it together. It doesn’t seem real. I expect to see her walking through the door any minute. It just hasn’t quite sunk in yet.”
DeLayne Davis, a relative, called Ms. Yaun “a good, godly woman.”
Ms. Davis stood with family and friends outside Ms. Yaun’s home in Acworth on Wednesday afternoon, wiping tears from her eyes.
“She was the rock for this family,” Ms. Davis said. “If any family needed anything, they went to her. She doted on her kids.”
A U.S. Army veteran
Paul Andre Michels, who was among those killed at Young’s Asian Massage, was one of nine siblings, his brother John Michels said.
“We did almost everything together,” said Mr. Michels, 52.
His brother, he said, was a businessman and a veteran of the U.S. Army infantry, where he served in the late 1980s. Paul Michels had been married for more than 20 years and was a Catholic as well as a strong political conservative, his brother said. He grew up in southwest Detroit and moved to Georgia about 25 years ago for work.
“My brother was a very hard-working, loving man,” Mr. Michels said.
A survivor: ‘I’ve been shot!’
Elcias R. Hernandez-Ortiz, the man injured in the Acworth attack, was making his way to a money exchange business next door to Young’s Asian Massage when shots rang out, his wife, Flor Gonzalez, said. Moments later, he desperately reached for his cellphone.
“I’ve been shot!” Mr. Hernandez-Ortiz told his wife, she later recalled. “Please come.”
Ms. Gonzalez, 27, said she rushed to the hospital on Tuesday and was unable to see her 30-year-old husband until after midnight. Doctors told her that he had been wounded in his forehead, throat, lungs and stomach. He underwent surgery on Tuesday night.
“Doctors told me he had been very lucky, but that he was still very grave,” she said. “He was lucky that the bullet didn’t penetrate his brain.”
Ms. Gonzalez said she reminded her husband that next week the couple had been planning to celebrate their daughter’s 10th birthday, as a form of encouragement.
“I pleaded with him to keep fighting and that he has a family,” she said. “He loves his daughter a lot. He’s always been a dedicated father, very loving.”
Mr. Hernandez-Ortiz, who goes by Alex, moved to Georgia from Guatemala more than 10 years ago, his wife said, and worked as a mechanic. They had been married just as long.
“Many others died,” she said holding back tears, “and my heart breaks for them. Whoever did this is not human.”
![Tear gas reigns down on a woman kneeling in the street with her hands in the air after a demonstration over the killing of teenager Michael Brown by a Ferguson police officer on August 17, 2014 in Ferguson, Mo.]({"default":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BBgzvAh.img?h=90&w=120&m=6&q=60&u=t&o=t&l=f&x=1380&y=1374"} "Tear gas reigns down on a woman kneeling in the street - Scott Olson/Getty Images")
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