The four victims who were killed at two spas in Atlanta were identified on Friday after officials had spent several days trying to notify the next of kin of one of the victims.
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The four victims who were killed at two spas in Atlanta were identified on Friday morning.
The Fulton County Medical Examinerโs Office identified the women as Soon Chung Park, 74; Hyun Jung Grant, 51; Suncha Kim, 69; and Yong Yue, 63. All of the victims were women of Asian descent.
The authorities had withheld the names for several days after the shooting on Tuesday as they sought to notify the proper family member of one of the victims.
The
statement from the medical examinerโs office said three of the women had been shot in the head and one had been shot in the chest, but included little more information.
Ms. Grant, 51, was an employee at Gold Spa. She spent most of her time working, rising early and returning late at night, according to her son, Eric Park. A single mother, she worried about helping her two sons with their college tuition and paying the rent and bills on the home they shared in Duluth, Ga.
She did not speak much about her job, preferring to tell people that she worked at a makeup store. โShe didnโt want us to worry about her ever,โ said Eric Park, 20.
On her free days, she liked to take Eric and his older brother, Randy, 22, to the aquarium or the mall. They would usually end up at a Korean restaurant, sharing galbi or sundubu, a spicy tofu stew Ms. Grant craved.
She was playful and fun and had a young spirit โ she liked to say she had the mind of a young teenager, Eric Park said. She enjoyed watching Korean dramas and whipped up bowls of kimchi chigae. โAs long as we were together, she was pretty happy,โ he said.
The trio was close-knit, as the rest of their family lived in Korea and the brothers did not have a relationship with their father, Eric Park said. Ms. Grant was a supportive mother who encouraged her sons to carve out their own futures.
Ms. Grantโs sons learned about Tuesdayโs shooting from a Gold Spa employeeโs daughter, but did not know their mother had died until late that night when a relative in Korea saw her name in a report.
โAll I can think about is her,โ Eric said. โLooking at the news just gets me mad. That deputy saying
the shooter had a bad day โ how is that a bad day? To me itโs a hate crime no matter how it looked.โ
The police had already identified the four victims who were killed at Youngโs Asian Massage in Cherokee County, a suburb, which the gunman had targeted before driving to the two spas in the City of Atlanta.
Xiaojie Tan, the hardworking owner of Youngโs Asian Massage in Acworth, Ga., made her patrons feel at home and treated her friends like family, one longtime customer said on Thursday. Two days ahead of her 50th birthday, Ms. Tan was among eight people killed at three spas in the Atlanta area.
One of her employees, Daoyou Feng, was also among those left dead on Tuesday. The suspected gunman, Robert Aaron Long, has been
charged with eight counts of murder and one count of aggravated assault.
Greg Hynson, the longtime customer of Ms. Tan, described her as โjust the sweetest, kindest, most giving person.โ
Among the other victims were:
- Delaina Ashley Yaun: Ms. Yaun, 33, was on a date with her husband when she was killed. A mother of two, Ms. Yaun had grown up in the area and had worked at a Waffle House restaurant.
- Paul Andre Michels: Mr. Michels, 54, who came from a large family, was a businessman and an Army veteran. He grew up in Detroit and moved to Georgia about 25 years ago.โ