Rallies to mark f8k8 com downloadirst anniversary of Atlanta shootings

Wednesday will mark one year since a gunman attacked three massage parlors in the Atlanta area and killed eight people, six of them women of Asian descent.

Over the past year, major cities across the United States also have seen an increase of reported anti-Asian hate crimes.

A large rally against anti-Asian racism and violence called "Break the Silence" is planned for Wednesday at the Georgia Capitol. Other cities such as Chicago, New York, Houston, San Francisco and Washington DC will hold rallies as well.

Events in the Atlanta area began Saturday with a community remembrance day. About 200 mourners, family and community members gathered at a large park in the Atlanta suburb of Brookhaven to memorialize the spa shooting victims. For security reasons, the service wasn't open to the public.

The backdrop of the rally was a statue memorializing Asian "comfort women", who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II. The event featured art, music and poetry to commemorate the somber week.

Those killed one year ago were: Xiaojie "Emily" Tan, 49; Daoyou Feng, 44; Delaina Yaun, 33; Paul Michels, 54; Suncha Kim, 69; Soon Chung Park, 74; Hyun Jung Grant, 51; and Yong Ae Yue, 63.

Yong Ae Yue was born in South Korea and immigrated to the US 40 years ago.

Robert Peterson, 39, her youngest son, said not a day goes by that he doesn't think of his mother.

"My mom was more than her ethnicity. She was more than her job and she was more than the way she was killed," he told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "Our family not only grieves on March 16 but every day because of the continued trauma that we see on our televisions in the increasing violence against AAPI communities and hate."

"The atmosphere is a broad range of emotion right now," Long Tran, a business owner who attended the event told NPR. "I think for some people they were like, 'Oh man, I can't believe it's been a year.'''

After shooting five people at the Young Asian Massage in Cherokee County, investigators said Robert Aaron Long drove about 30 miles south to Atlanta, where he shot three women at Gold Spa and one woman across the street at Aromatherapy Spa.

He has pleaded guilty to four counts of murder and other charges in the shooting deaths of those in Cherokee County. He received four life sentences without parole and an additional 35 years.

Long now faces charges in Fulton County. The Fulton County District Attorney's Office said it plans to seek the death penalty, a sentence the victims' families support.

Cherokee County District Attorney Shannon Wallace said during a previous hearing that investigators found no evidence of racial bias in his murderous actions. But the community said that regardless of intent, lives were lost, with ethnicity as a common thread.

The anniversary comes amid an increase in reported anti-Asian hate crimes nationally, including brutal attacks in New York and California.

On Monday, a man was charged with attempted murder as a hate crime in an assault on a 67-year-old Asian woman in a New York City suburb. The attack was captured on surveillance video, showing she was punched more than 125 times in the head and face and stomped on seven times.

The incident occurred on Friday night in Yonkers, about 17 miles north of Manhattan in Westchester County.

Tammel Esco, 42, was charged with one count of attempted murder as a hate crime and assault in the second degree involving a victim 65 or older. He is being held without bail at the Westchester County jail.

Esco shouted a racial slur as the woman — who wasn't identified — walked past him outside her apartment building shortly after 6 pm Friday, police said. He followed her to the building's front door and attacked her from behind, and then hit her with a barrage of punches and stomped on her, the video shows.

The victim sustained broken bones in her face, bleeding on the brain and numerous cuts and bruises on her head and face. She was hospitalized in stable condition on Monday, police said.