Georgia lawmaker: ‘I am relieved that this will be treated as a hate crime’

The Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis filed notice that she plans to seek the death penalty and enhanced hate crimes charges against Atlanta spa shooting suspect Robert Aaron Long, according to a source familiar with the criminal investigation.

Long was indicted for 19 counts total in Fulton County, according to a source familiar with the criminal investigation. Four charges for malice murder, four charges of felony murder, one charge for domestic terrorism, five charges for aggravated assault, and five charges of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, according to the source.   

The March 16 shooting spree across the Atlanta area that left eight people dead at three spas will be the first test of the hate crime law passed by the Georgia Legislature last year, which specifies enhanced penalties for crimes where victims were targeted for, among other things, race, gender, and sexual orientation. Seven of the victims killed in the spa shootings were women, and six of the victims were women of Asian descent.   

Peter Skandalakis, director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, said that the enhanced hate crime penalty for homicide in Georgia is either maximum of life in prison with possibility of parole at 30 years, life without parole, or the death penalty.  

Skandalakis said he wasn’t aware of the law being used at all over the last year. His agency’s mission is to provide support to prosecutors.

It will be up to a separate grand jury in Cherokee County to decide on charges for others killed in the shooting in Woodstock, Georgia, that left four killed and one person wounded.   

Authorities in Cherokee County previously said that Long told investigators that the shootings were not racially motivated and told them he has a “sexual addiction.”

Long’s appointed attorney could not immediately be reached for comment.  

The 21-year-old suspect from Woodstock, Georgia, about a half-hour drive north of Atlanta, is being held without bond in Cherokee County.