Tan, 49, was the mother of Jami Webb, a recent graduate from the University of Georgia. She was a licensed massage therapist and the owner of Young’s Asian Massage, along with other businesses in the area, including another spa and a tanning salon, according to state records. She was “the sweetest, most kind-hearted, giving, never-met-a-stranger person,” a friend told Atlanta’s WSB-TV. Just one day away from her 50th birthday when she was killed, according to USA Today, Tan was described by her daughter as thoughtful, devoted to her family, and looking forward to traveling in her retirement.
Hyun Jung Grant was a Korean immigrant who worked at Atlanta’s Gold Spa. Her son Randy Park, 23, shared a tribute to his mother on GoFundMe: He said his mother was a single parent who “dedicated her whole life to providing for my brother and I.” She loved dancing and sushi, according to Park, who told The Daily Beast, “She wasn’t just my mother. She was my friend.” Park, who now has to raise his brother alone, is not buying law-enforcement officials’ suggestion that the attack was motivated by a supposed sex addiction, not racism. “That’s bullshit,” he said.
Yaun Gonzalez, 33, was a mother of two — 13-year-old Mayson and 8-month-old Mia. She had worked all day on Tuesday at the Waffle House a few shops down from Tan’s spa business. She had been looking forward to having a relaxing night out with her husband, Mario Gonzalez, whom she married only last year, and the couple had reportedly never been to Young’s Asian Massage before. According to Fox 5 Atlanta, family members say that Mario Gonzalez, who survived the shooting, is “taking [the situation] hard.” Delaina Ashley Yaun Gonzalez’s friends and family have set up a GoFundMe to address her funeral costs.
Michels, 54, was a handyman at Young’s Asian Massage and the owner of an electric company. He was only recently hired for the role and excited to take it on after looking for more work during the pandemic, according to a friend who spoke with CBS46. An army veteran originally from Detroit, Michels is one of nine siblings and is survived by his wife of more than two decades. In an interview with the Guardian, his brother John Michels emphasized his kindness. “He was just a regular guy, very good-hearted, very soft-natured,” he said, while noting that Michels had expressed an interest in getting involved in the massage business.
A licensed massage therapist, she was laid off at the start of the pandemic last year and was excited to finally start shifts at the spa again, her son Elliott Peterson, 42, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Friday morning. Yue’s youngest child, Robert Peterson, 38, agreed, recalling their mother as a kind and deeply caring woman. If you stopped by her house, she’d sit you down, ask if you’d eaten, and then insist on a trip to H Mart grocery store so she could make a meal.
Daoyou Feng, 44, began working at Young’s Asian Massage in recent months, according to Tan’s friend Hynson. She was kind and quiet, he said. Her relatives could not be reached for comment.
Soon Chung Park, 74, was also a worker at an Atlanta spa. Her family didn’t respond when reached for comment. Park previously lived in New York, where she has relatives, her son-in-law, Scott Lee, told the New York Times. “She got along with her family so well,” Lee told the newspaper.
Suncha Kim, 69, worked at one of the spas in Atlanta. Her family could not be reached for comment. Kim, a grandmother, was married for more than 50 years, a family member told the Times. She enjoyed line dancing and worked hard, the relative said.
Hernandez-Ortiz, 30, was the only survivor of the victims who were shot on Tuesday, and he remains hospitalized for multiple gunshot wounds in his “forehead, throat, lungs and stomach,” according to the Washington Post. He was shot while standing outside in the shopping center where Young’s Asian Massage is located. “He came from nothing and has come a long way; that is why I have faith he will survive this,” his wife Flor Gonzalez told the Washington Post. Gonzalez has also set up a GoFundMe to help with the costs of Hernandez-Ortiz’s medical care.
Out of the 400 Asian-run businesses surveyed, 60 percent reported a large negative effect from the pandemic, compared to just 40 percent of all California businesses surveyed by the U.S. Census Bureau’s Small Business Pulse Survey.
“Originally, businesses were the top site of racism, because that’s the only place we would interact with people during quarantine — we go out shopping, and then we would interact with people,” Russell Jeung, co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate, told NBC Asian America in May. “Now we’re seeing more incidents in public places like streets and sidewalks. So it seems to me as we come out of the pandemic, everybody is interacting more in the broader public and Asian Americans are experiencing racism there as well as businesses.”
Prosecutors confirmed that they will seek the death penalty for Robert Aaron Long, the suspect accused of shooting and murdering four people at two Asian-run day spas in Fulton County, Georgia, Reuters reports. Long is the suspect in three shootings that took place on March 16. The shootings killed a total of eight people, including six Asian women.
He now faces the death penalty for killing 69-year-old Suncha Kim, 74-year-old Soon Chung Park, 51-year-old Hyun Jung Grant, and 63-year-old Yong Ae Yue at the Gold Spa and Aromatherapy Spa in Fulton County. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis also filed court papers stating her intention to seek hate crime charges against Long, Reutersreports.
Ratanapakdee, 84, was walking along Anza Vista and Fortuna Avenues on Jan. 28 when a teenager shoved him for no apparent reason. The attack, which occurred in broad daylight, was captured on surveillance video. The suspect, 19-year-old Antoine Watson, was arrested the same day along with a female accomplice. The latter was soon released due to an absence of evidence, while Watson pleaded not guilty to murder and elder abuse charges.
The mural was created by artists Thitiwat Phromratanapongse and Sarah Siskin. It is located at Grant Avenue and California Street. Ratanapakdee’s two children, Monthanus and Pasama, set up a new GoFundMe page in hopes of raising funds for their legal fight, education of his grandchildren, and grief counseling.
Reported incidents targeting Asian Americans reached more than 9,000 since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new report. Stop AAPI Hate received 9,081 reports between March 2020 and June 2021, marking an increase of nearly 2,500 incidents from the previous period. Types of reports ranged from verbal and online harassment to physical assault. Women submitted more than 63 percent of the reports.
“When you encourage hate, it’s not like a genie in a bottle where you can pull it out and push it back in whenever you want,” Manjusha Kulkarni, co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate and executive director of the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council told The Associated Press (AP). “There’s too much perpetuating these belief systems to make them go away.”
Maricia Bell was taken into custody Thursday and will be charged with four counts of assault as a hate crime. She was picked up at a grocery store on Parsons Boulevard after she was identified by an employer.
On July 11, at 10 p.m., at the corner of 72nd Avenue and Parsons Blvd, the suspect approached a 73-year-old Asian woman in a parking lot and punched her in the cheek causing pain and swelling. On July 21, at 7:30 a.m., the suspect approached a 75-year-old Asian woman collecting cans from behind, and struck her in the back of the head with an unknown object.
Police were alerted to the 2100 block of Piedmont Road where someone saw Joshua Dowd, 28, alone and barely breathing as he laid on the train tracks with his head bleeding, reported CBS46. Dowd was brought to Grady Hospital for treatment, according to Colin Kelly, the victim’s partner of over three years. Kelly said he doesn’t know how his partner ended up at the scene where he was found.
In an interview with WSBTV, Kelly said it can’t be a robbery as Dowd “still had his phone and debit card on him.” Loved ones and family members cite Dowd’s race and sexual orientation as possible reasons for an attack as he identified as a gay Asian American. Dowd, who sustained a blunt force injury to his head, is now in a coma after doctors performed surgery on him.
At the 1984 Winter Olympics, 16-year-old skater Tiffany Chin was nicknamed “China Doll” by journalists covering the games. In 1992, a Los Angeles Times article described Olympic champion figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi as “itsy-bitsy” and “fragile.” Reporter Mike Downey wrote that Yamaguchi was “not much bigger than a Barbie doll” when she began doing foot-long leaps on the ice as a child.
Experts say that when the media focuses on Asian American Olympians’ bodies, it erases the existence and excellence of their athleticism and makes it seem like their talent is simply innate and not the result of years of training and dedication. Critics also point out that Asians, like all ethnicities, have varied body types and there is no uniform way to describe them.
An Asian woman underwent brain surgery on Saturday after she and her son were dragged down the subway stairs during a bungled robbery in New York City. The unnamed woman, 58, was with her 23-year-old son on Saturday. They were walking up the steps at Canal Street station at around 10:45am when an assailant attacked them from behind, grabbing the son’s backpack. The son grabbed his mother as he fell, and the pair tumbled down the stairs.
The thief ran away, and surveillance footage showed a black man in a short-sleeved khaki shirt and white bandana around his neck leaving the station. Police are still hunting for him. They are also investigating whether the attack was racially motivated, the New York Daily News reported. Hate crimes against Asian Americans are on the rise, with unprovoked attacks happening across the United States.
Footage of the incident was taken in front of the Ramen Lab Eatery, as one of the employees tells the three white men in the video, “I asked you nicely to leave; that’s about it.” The employees were closing the store for the night and appeared to be putting away the outdoor dining tables. The men were eating pizza at one of the tables when the employee asked them to take their meal elsewhere.
“Take your fucking China flu, and shove it up your ass,” says the ramen racist. “Asshole, you fucking Taiwanese ch*nk, motherfucker.” Folks on Twitter expressed outrage over the incident, with some folks wondering who the “ramen racist” was. The men in the video have not been identified.
For the second straight day, KPIX has obtained new video of a violent robbery targeting older victims on the same block of Oakland’s Chinatown. KPIX 5 reporter Da Lin actually pulled up to the scene of Friday’s incident as the robbers were driving away from their attack victims.
Both robberies happened in broad daylight at the same location and were both captured on video from the same surveillance camera. People who live, work, and shop in Chinatown tell KPIX they’re fed up and scared. Victim Aiwon Woo said in Cantonese the robbers hit them in the head. She said they repeatedly punched her daughter until she fell to the ground. Once both women were on the ground, the robbers took their purses.
Tan, 49, was the mother of Jami Webb, a recent graduate from the University of Georgia. She was a licensed massage therapist and the owner of Young’s Asian Massage, along with other businesses in the area, including another spa and a tanning salon, according to state records. She was “the sweetest, most kind-hearted, giving, never-met-a-stranger person,” a friend told Atlanta’s WSB-TV. Just one day away from her 50th birthday when she was killed, according to USA Today, Tan was described by her daughter as thoughtful, devoted to her family, and looking forward to traveling in her retirement.
Hyun Jung Grant was a Korean immigrant who worked at Atlanta’s Gold Spa. Her son Randy Park, 23, shared a tribute to his mother on GoFundMe: He said his mother was a single parent who “dedicated her whole life to providing for my brother and I.” She loved dancing and sushi, according to Park, who told The Daily Beast, “She wasn’t just my mother. She was my friend.” Park, who now has to raise his brother alone, is not buying law-enforcement officials’ suggestion that the attack was motivated by a supposed sex addiction, not racism. “That’s bullshit,” he said.
Yaun Gonzalez, 33, was a mother of two — 13-year-old Mayson and 8-month-old Mia. She had worked all day on Tuesday at the Waffle House a few shops down from Tan’s spa business. She had been looking forward to having a relaxing night out with her husband, Mario Gonzalez, whom she married only last year, and the couple had reportedly never been to Young’s Asian Massage before. According to Fox 5 Atlanta, family members say that Mario Gonzalez, who survived the shooting, is “taking [the situation] hard.” Delaina Ashley Yaun Gonzalez’s friends and family have set up a GoFundMe to address her funeral costs.
Michels, 54, was a handyman at Young’s Asian Massage and the owner of an electric company. He was only recently hired for the role and excited to take it on after looking for more work during the pandemic, according to a friend who spoke with CBS46. An army veteran originally from Detroit, Michels is one of nine siblings and is survived by his wife of more than two decades. In an interview with the Guardian, his brother John Michels emphasized his kindness. “He was just a regular guy, very good-hearted, very soft-natured,” he said, while noting that Michels had expressed an interest in getting involved in the massage business.
A licensed massage therapist, she was laid off at the start of the pandemic last year and was excited to finally start shifts at the spa again, her son Elliott Peterson, 42, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Friday morning. Yue’s youngest child, Robert Peterson, 38, agreed, recalling their mother as a kind and deeply caring woman. If you stopped by her house, she’d sit you down, ask if you’d eaten, and then insist on a trip to H Mart grocery store so she could make a meal.
Daoyou Feng, 44, began working at Young’s Asian Massage in recent months, according to Tan’s friend Hynson. She was kind and quiet, he said. Her relatives could not be reached for comment.
Soon Chung Park, 74, was also a worker at an Atlanta spa. Her family didn’t respond when reached for comment. Park previously lived in New York, where she has relatives, her son-in-law, Scott Lee, told the New York Times. “She got along with her family so well,” Lee told the newspaper.
Suncha Kim, 69, worked at one of the spas in Atlanta. Her family could not be reached for comment. Kim, a grandmother, was married for more than 50 years, a family member told the Times. She enjoyed line dancing and worked hard, the relative said.
Hernandez-Ortiz, 30, was the only survivor of the victims who were shot on Tuesday, and he remains hospitalized for multiple gunshot wounds in his “forehead, throat, lungs and stomach,” according to the Washington Post. He was shot while standing outside in the shopping center where Young’s Asian Massage is located. “He came from nothing and has come a long way; that is why I have faith he will survive this,” his wife Flor Gonzalez told the Washington Post. Gonzalez has also set up a GoFundMe to help with the costs of Hernandez-Ortiz’s medical care.
Please help the families if you are able to. And remember each one of these names.
