The other three would be Americans of Korean ethnicity, Kwangsuk Lee, the Republic of Korea’s deputy consulate general in Atlanta, told CNN on Friday.
The South Korean State Department decided not to release any further information about the victims, including their names, “in order to protect the privacy of the victims and to respect requests from family members,” Lee said. The South Korean consulate in Atlanta received information from the Atlanta police on the four victims of Korean descent on Friday, he said.
Some officials have called for hate crime charges against the suspect, who authorities say may have been traveling to carry out more attacks when he was arrested.
The South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs has called for an investigation into the matter as soon as possible. The Ministry plans to provide the necessary support for the funeral process.
In Cherokee County, the suspect faces four malicious murders, once with attempted murder, once with aggravated assault, and five times with the use of a firearm while committing a crime. He has also been charged with four murders in connection with the two shootings at the Atlanta spa, police there said.
Officials condemn rising anti-Asian hate crimes
Atlanta Police Chief Rodney Bryant has said it is too early to know the suspect’s motive, and Cherokee County District Attorney Shannon Wallace said the investigation is ongoing and appropriate charges will be filed.
But retired FBI supervisor Jim Clemente told Erin Burnett to CNN that the level of planning seen in his actions shows the suspect was motivated by more than just a “ bad day. ”
“His actions show that he was targeting a particular type of person on this particular day, and not only did he do it in one location, but he also went to a second and third location,” said Clemente.
While in Atlanta, Biden and Harris did not explicitly state that they viewed the shootings as a hate crime. But they noted that whatever the shooter’s motivation, the murders come as hate crimes against Asian Americans increase.
“The conversation we had today with the leaders of (Asian American and Pacific Islander), and that we hear all over the country, is that hatred and violence often hide in plain sight. It is often answered with silence,” said Biden. “That has been the case in our history, but that has to change, because our silence is complicity.”
Senator Tammy Duckworth told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that she was not surprised by the attack that killed so many Asian women.
“We’ve been marching towards more and more violent hate crimes against AAPIs over the past year,” Duckworth said.
Victims leave families: ‘she was one of my best friends’
The names of all eight killed people have been released.
Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33, from Acworth; Paul Andre Michels, 54, from Atlanta; Xiaojie Tan, 49, from Kennesaw; and Daoyou Feng, 44, were shot at Youngs Asian Massage in Cherokee County.
Elcias R. Hernandez-Ortiz, 30, of Acworth, was also shot at Young’s Asian Massage, but survived.
About 30 miles away and within an hour of the initial shooting, four Asian women were killed in Atlanta – three at the Gold Massage Spa and one at the Aroma Therapy Spa across the street, authorities said.
Atlanta’s four victims were: Soon Chung Park, 74; Hyun Jung Grant, 51; Suncha Kim, 69; and Yong Ae Yue, 63, according to the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office.
Of those four, three died of gunshot wounds to the head, and one died of a gunshot wound to the chest, the medical examiner’s office said.
“She was one of my best friends and the biggest influence on who we are today,” Park wrote.
The GoFundMe page, set up for Grant’s two sons, had raised more than $ 2 million from more than 50,000 donors as of Saturday morning. GoFundMe told CNN the page has been verified; Park did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.
The page says the money donated will pay for food, rent, and other monthly bills. It says the brothers now only have each other in the US, with every other family member in South Korea.
“Losing her has put a new lens on my eyes for the amount of hatred that exists in our world,” Park wrote.
“About an hour in … I heard the shots. I didn’t see anything, just started to think it was in the room where my wife was,” he told the paper.
“(The shooter) took the most valuable thing I had in my life,” Gonzalez said. “He only left me with pain.”
CNN’s Jason Hanna, Gregory Lemos, Audrey Ash, Nicole Chavez, Gisela Crespo, Nicquel Ellis, Jamiel Lynch, Paul P. Murphy, Raja Razek, Casey Tolan, Amir Vera, Amanda Watts and Holly Yan contributed to this report.