ATLANTA—Colorful flower bouquets carpeted the entryway of the Gold Spa. “Stop Asian Hate” signs were carried by some of the more than 100 mourners at the Piedmont Road spa, one location of a crime spree where a man shot to death eight people.

The shootings, which took the lives of six Asian women, brought together the community in the face of tragedy. Catholics joined others at the March 21 interfaith prayer service outside the spa. A sign promoted Psalm 133:1, which states: “How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity.”

Gregory Bahk, 52, stood at the service, alongside his wife and college-age son.

The gunman should have faced his problems “instead of blaming women and killing them,” said Bahk, a long-time member of Korean Martyrs Church, Doraville.

Six of the victims were of Asian descent, and two were white, according to police. All but one were women.

A father and son stop by to view the makeshift memorial at the Gold Spa in Atlanta on Sunday morning, March 21. Photo By Michael Alexander

Police identified the victims as Soon Chung Park, 74; Hyun Jung Grant, 51; Suncha Kim, 69; Yong Yue, 63; Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33; Paul Andre Michels, 54; Xiaojie Tan, 49; and Daoyou Feng, 44.

Xiaojie Tan’s funeral Mass was at St. Ann Church, Marietta, on March 26.

Authorities arrested a 21-year-old Cherokee County man, Robert Aaron Long, for the shootings.  It has been reported authorities are looking into the suspect’s claim he acted out of a sexual addiction and a motivation of racial hatred.

Joshua Kim, a senior at Suwanee’s Lambert High School, attended the hour-long interfaith service by livestream. The news of the shooting first made him numb, which was replaced by anger, he said.

“What was the gunman looking to gain out of this?” he asked.

For Kim, participating by watching online was an act of solidarity with the families of the victims, those attending the service and the wider Asian community.

Atlanta’s Asian Catholic community

About 6% of Metro Atlanta residents come from Asia, according to the Census Bureau. The largest Asian communities are Indian, Chinese and Vietnamese.

Multiple parishes serve different Asian nationalities. Two parishes provide worship in Korean, two serve the Vietnamese community and one celebrates Mass in Chinese. Four of the murdered women were of Korean heritage but were not members of the parishes.

Eight candles were lit by parishioners before the March 21 Mass began at Holy Name of Jesus Chinese Catholic Mission, Norcross. They served to remember the eight victims killed in the March 16 mass shooting at three Atlanta-area massage parlors. Six of the eight victims were Asian. Photo By Michael Alexander

Believers remembered the dead at Mass. Candles were lit for every victim at the Holy Name of Jesus, the Norcross mission for Chinese Catholics. Eight parishioners representing the different ethnicities of the church touched a flame to the candles including members from Taiwan, Canton, mainland China, Fuzhou, Vietnam, Korea, as well as Caucasian and Hispanic parishioners, said Father Bill Hao, the pastor.

Advocates have called attention to a national trend of increased harassment of Asian women and men. There have been nearly 3,800 reports of hate incidents against Asian-Americans nationwide since March 2020, according to Stop AAPI Hate. Researchers found anti-Asian hate crimes reported to police increased 149%, while hate crimes overall dropped 7% in 2020.

Shortly after the killings, Atlanta Archbishop Gregory J. Hartmayer, OFM Conv., expressed his closeness to the Asian community in the face of hate.

“We have brothers and sisters in Christ who endure discrimination, aggression and violence every day of their lives,” he wrote in the statement. “Tonight, many of them may wonder if they will be safe—my heart aches just to think of it.”

God calls people to unity

Five days after the killings, the community remembered the dead. Among the faith leaders at the March 21 service outside Gold Spa, on the edge of the Buckhead neighborhood, was Jesuit Father Kolbe Chung, administrator of St. Andrew Kim Church, one of two church communities serving Korean Catholics in the Archdiocese of Atlanta.

Father Chung, speaking to the mourners in Korean, said that God feels their pain and linked the tragedy to the biblical story of Cain killing Abel.

The victims were taken from their loved ones “by a cruel decision of another,” he said. “They never had the chance to see the faces or look into the eyes of their loved ones one last time. Even the opportunity to say ‘ I love you’ was deprived of them.”

God creates all people in a spirit of unity, he said. “Cultural differences are not a justification for hate. Our differences enrich our lives and those around us. Diversity is what makes our community so beautiful,” he said. People at the service said their anger at the killings escalated when a police spokesman seemed to favor the gunman. Shortly after the gunman’s arrest, an officer said the suspect had a “bad day” before the killing.

Said Bahk, “I don’t think so. It was a bad day for the people who got killed and for the family of those killed.”

Bahk has been a member of the Korean Martyrs Church since emigrating to the United States in 2000. The family runs an afterschool art program in Suwannee. Many family and friends in his native country contacted him, fearful of the mass shootings in America, he said.

Father Kolbe Chung, the administrator of St. Andrew Kim Church, Duluth, holds a bouquet of roses during the closing prayer of a March 21 interfaith prayer service. At the conclusion of the service, Father Chung and many others placed flowers at the makeshift memorial in front of the spa. Photo By Michael Alexander

For John Choi, 60, racism against Asians has been part of the fabric of society since he arrived in Georgia in the early 1970s. His family moved to Georgia from South Korea after a short time in Virginia. His physician father’s work brought the family here.

“Racism is nothing new,” said Choi, who owns a real estate company. However, when former President Donald Trump referred to the coronavirus as “kung flu,” it “made everything more hostile,” said Choi, a leader at Duluth’s St. Andrew Kim Church.

For Bahk, this season of Lent is a time to reflect on Jesus’ message of unity, which crossed language, gender and cultural barriers. He said people must unite and demand justice. Often, Asians don’t stand up for themselves and advocate, he said.

“This is not that time. We have to raise our voice,” he said.

Bahk was encouraged to see people of different races attending the service and heard shouts of support from passing cars.

“Remove the hate, fill with love,” he said.

In a Zoom interview, Father Chung spoke in Korean. He said when Catholics “see something wrong, we know it’s wrong, we know it’s discrimination, we know there’s a prejudice; and as a Catholic, we should stand up as a human being, as a citizen … .”

Kim, 17, asked other Catholics to “please pray, just praying is always good.”

He hopes to study political science in college, and said it would help for the Catholic community to “understand the struggles Asians go through.” In his view “racism towards Asians is a little bit more normalized” than toward other races.

“I’m pretty sure a lot of members in the Catholic Church approach it with the best intentions, but sometimes their actions don’t really match with that,” said Kim, as he talked about slurs and mocking he’s heard about the shape of his eyes and other physical attributes.