Atlanta gunman Robert Aaron Long waited for an hour outside parlor before opening fire, CCTV footage reveals
Exclusive footage of Atlanta's racist gun attack shows the gunman Robert Aaron Long parked in his car outside Young's Asian Massage Parlor on Tuesday afternoon, waiting in the driver's seat of his black Hyundai Tucson for an hour before stepping inside and opening fire. He killed four people there.
A video obtained by DailyMail shows 21-year-old Long exit the parlor a little later and get into his car on the way to continue his massacre at two other Atlanta area spas. Shortly after his exit, the CCTV footage shows some survivors exiting the spa before the arrival of cops and paramedics only a few minutes later. In the video, one victim can be seen carried out and left on the sidewalk with blood flowing from a bullet wound in the back of their head. Another man is seen sitting by the sidewalk with handcuffs as his wife lay dying inside. According to the latest reports, police at the time still hadn't identified a suspect as Long and had restrained the salon-goer as a precaution.
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Witness recollections
It was Alex Acosta, who works with his wife Rita Barron at Gabby's Boutique next door to Young's Asian Massage Parlor who heard the first shots and called emergency services. At the time, he was reportedly washing his hands in a sink at the back of his shop.
When he went out in the front, he saw three women who'd just exited the spa. "Somebody inside, they shot, they shot!" one of the women of Asian descent reportedly told him. Acosta then called out to his wife asking her to "call 911!"
Acosta recognized the man in handcuffs on the sidewalk as Mario Gonzalez, whose wife Delaina was still inside the spa with a fatal bullet wound. "Mario looked at me and he told me his wife was still inside," Acosta recalled. "He told me to tell the police." When Barron told a cop about Delaina, the officer reportedly replied, "I know."
Barron had apparently known Delaina for years - Delaina would shop in her boutique and Barron would meet her at a nearby Waffle House where she reportedly worked as a waitress. "I feel sad for all the families because we knew all the people who were involved," Barron said.
On Tuesday, in a three-hour crime spree that stretched three massage parlors, one in Acworth and two in Atlanta, Long shot dead eight people including six women of Asian descent. According to reports, he said he was then on his way to Florida to target porn-industry locations, but was arrested 150 miles south of Atlanta.
At first, police said they were probing whether race was a motivating factor in the killings since six of the eight victims were Asian women. Especially since Long's apparently also revealed he had a "potential sexual addiction" and "may have frequented some of these places in the past," according to Sheriff Frank Reynolds of Cherokee County, where the Acworth shootings took place. Reynolds reportedly said those issues could be the motivation behind the shooting.