ATLANTA (AP) – Mothers, grandmothers and a brother. They loved to cook, dance, sing and travel. They worked long hours, sometimes in environments that their children understood little about. These are the eight people who were killed by gunfire at three massage companies in Atlanta. Seven of those killed were women, and six of them were of Asian descent. Police charged a 21-year-old white man in the murders and said he was solely responsible for the deadliest mass shooting in the US since 2019. Fuller photos of nearly all of the victims have appeared in the days since the shooting. The exception is 44-year-old Daoyou Feng, an employee at Youngs Asian Massage near Woodstock about whom little is known.
On Sunday, 63-year-old Yong Ae Yue was supposed to go shopping and cook Korean food for her family. Instead, those family members mourn her death at the Aromatherapy Spa in Atlanta on Tuesday.
“We are devastated by the loss of our beloved mother, and words cannot adequately describe our grief,” her sons said in a statement from attorney BJay Pak.
Yue emigrated from South Korea to the United States, and for a time was married to Mac Peterson from Columbus, who once served at the military’s Fort Benning in that Georgia town.
“Mother was a wonderful woman who loved introducing our family and friends to her home-cooked Korean food and Korean karaoke,” said Rob Peterson, one of Yue’s sons, who described her as a “wonderful woman” in a call. to collect money. Will miss going with Mom on her weekly Sunday routine to the grocery store and a traditional Korean dinner. She was always kind-hearted and willing to help anyone she met. “
Yue was a licensed massage therapist in Georgia who owned a home in the suburb of Peachtree Corners. Relatives who reached there declined comment.
A granddaughter praises Suncha Kim’s love and mourns that she won’t be able to “see her children and grandchildren live the life she never lived.”
69-year-old Kim was one of three women who died at the Gold Spa in Atlanta.
Regina Song wrote that her grandmother was born in Seoul and came to the United States speaking little English and working multiple jobs to care for her husband, son and daughter.
“This took tremendous courage and my grandmother was a fighter,” Song wrote.
Family members told The Washington Post that Kim was a Catholic and naturalized US citizen who volunteered her time and raised money for a variety of causes. Relatives said Kim won the President’s Volunteer Service Award for her efforts to feed homeless people in the Washington DC area.
“She was pure in heart and the most selfless woman I knew,” her granddaughter wrote. “She represented everything I wanted to be as a woman, with no hate or bitterness in her heart.”
“She never forgot to call me once a week to say, ‘Stay strong in life … if you’re happy, I’m happy’.”
Soon, Chung Park had spent much of her life in New York and northern New Jersey before moving to Atlanta, son-in-law Scott Lee told The New York Times and The Washington Post.
In Atlanta, 74-year-old Park settled in a corridor of Korean businesses in the suburb of Duluth in Gwinnett County. Although she had relatives in the New York area, she built a new life here, with 38-year-old Gwangho Lee telling The Daily Beast that he accepted Park’s marriage proposal after the two met in 2017.
Park was the day manager of the Gold Spa and cooked for employees. Lee, a taxi driver, told The Daily Beast that he was already on his way to Gold Spa when he got text messages about an apparent robbery, and tried to resuscitate Park with a police officer standing by after he arrived.
She was described as an unusually youthful appearance for her age, fit and active, a former dancer and hard worker,
“She just loved to work,” Scott Lee told The New York Times. “It wasn’t for the money. She just wanted a little work for her life. “
Hyun Jung Grant loved disco and club music, often strutting or moonwalking during household chores and wailing with her sons to tunes popping in the car.
The single mother found ways to indulge, despite working ‘almost every day’ to support two sons, said the eldest son, 22-year-old Randy Park.
“I learned how to moonwalk because as a kid I saw her moonwalk while vacuuming,” said Park.
On Tuesday night, Park was at home playing video games when he learned that a gunman had opened fire at the Gold Spa where his mother worked. He rushed to the crime scene and then to a police station to get more information. But it was through word of mouth that he found out his mother was dead.
Her job was a touchy topic, Park said, noting the stigma often associated with massage companies. She told her sons to tell others that she was doing makeup with her friends.
In the end, Park said, he didn’t care what she did for her job.
“She loved me and my brother enough to work for us, to dedicate her whole life,” he said. “That’s enough.”
Xiaojie “Emily” Tan, an entrepreneur who founded multiple businesses after arriving in the United States and knew little about the country, is remembered for being committed to her work and family.
The 49-year-old owned Youngs Asian Massage near Woodstock, where she was shot two days before her 50th birthday. She leaves behind a daughter who recently graduated from the University of Georgia, Jami Webb. Tan was married twice, first to Michael Webb, whom she met in her hometown of Nanning, according to USA Today. Later she married Jason Wang. She also owned Wang’s Feet and Body Massage in Kennesaw when she died.
“She worked a lot, and she was the kind of lady she wanted to rely on,” Wang told The Washington Post. Tan had previously worked and owned a nail salon.
Tan often visited her mother and other family members in China.
“She always said, ‘we family,'” Michael Webb told USA Today. Even if we got a divorce, she said so: “ We family. ‘Because she was like that. “
Paul Andre Michels ran a business installing security systems, a trade he learned after moving to Atlanta more than 25 years ago.
He’d talked about moving to a new job but never got the chance. He was shot dead along with three others at Youngs Asian Massage on Tuesday.
“As far as I understand, he was at the spa that day doing some work for them,” said Michels’ younger brother, John Michels of Commerce, Michigan.
Paul Michels may also have talked to the spa owner about how the business works, his brother said, as he had been thinking about opening a spa of his own.
His age caught up with him. You get to a point where you get tired of climbing up and down ladders, ”said John Michels. “He was actually looking to start his own massage spa. He talked about that last year. “
Paul Michels grew up in Detroit in a large family where he was the seventh of nine children. His brother John was number 8.
Although they were born 2.5 years apart, “he was actually my twin brother,” said John Michels. Both enlisted in the army after high school, and Paul joined the infantry.
A few years after leaving the military, Paul followed his brother to the Atlanta area in 1995 for a job installing telephones and security systems. He also met his wife, Bonnie, and they were married for over 20 years.
“He was a good, hard-working man who would do whatever he could to help people,” said John Michels. “He would lend you money if you needed it sometimes. You never left his house hungry. “
The day before she was murdered, Delaina Ashley Yaun stopped by Rita Barron’s boutique to say hello and show photos of her 8-month-old daughter.
‘She said to me,’ I’m happy. I want another baby, ” said Barron, who had met 33-year-old Yaun by eating at the Waffle House where the new mother worked.
Yaun and her new husband returned to the mall where Gabby’s Boutique is located on Tuesday, but this time they went next door to Youngs Asian Massage. They planned it as a day for Yaun to relax while a family member watched their daughter.
Barron and her husband, Alejandro Acosta, heard gunshots from the boutique and later noticed that a bullet had gone through the wall. She called the emergency number, and after the police arrived, Acosta watched them pull people out of the company, some bleeding and injured. Among those who ran away was Yaun’s husband, unharmed but distraught. His wife had been murdered. “As you can imagine, he is totally destroyed, without power, he doesn’t want to talk to anyone,” said Acosta, adding that he had spoken to Yaun’s husband twice since the shooting.
Relatives said that Yaun and her husband were youngs customers for the first time and were eager to relax.
‘They are innocent. They haven’t done anything wrong, ”Margaret Rushing, Yaun’s crying mother, told WAGA-TV. “I just don’t understand why he took my daughter.”