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Husband Of Georgia Spa Shooting Victim Says He Was Handcuffed, Detained For 4 Hours
Mario González says he was cuffed and detained for hours after his wife, Delaina Ashley Yaun, and three others were shot dead by a gunman inside Youngs Asian Massage.
The husband of one of the women gunned down during the series of spa shootings in Georgia said this week that he was handcuffed and detained for four hours while police tried to locate the shooter and that authorities did not immediately inform him of her death.
On Tuesday, a 21-year-old gunman killed eight people at three massage parlors in the Atlanta area. Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33, was one of four killed at Youngs Asian Massage in Acworth, the first location in the attacks.
Yaun's husband, Mario González, told the Spanish-language news outlet Mundo Hispánico that after his wife — who was in a separate room getting a massage during the shooting — was gunned down, he was handcuffed and detained by police for four hours and kept in the dark about what happened to her.
"I want to know if she is alive or dead ... they ignored me," he told the outlet.
González said that police waited hours before informing him of his wife's death. When asked why he believes this happened, González told the outlet, "maybe because I'm Mexican, I don't know. Because the truth is, they treated me badly."
The Cherokee County Sheriff's office has not immediately replied to Oxygen.com’s request for comment on Monday.
Cherokee County Sheriff's Captain Jay Baker, a spokesperson for the department, was heavily criticized for stating that the white male suspect had a “really bad day.” Additionally, a Facebook post in which he shared images of a “Covid 19 IMPORTED VIRUS FROM CHY-NA,” T-shirt from last year resurfaced following his comments.
Baker has since been removed from the case.
Six of the eight victims were of Asian descent, and seven were women. The demographic profile of the victims has prompted fears that it’s yet another hate crime against Asian Americans, which have been increasing recently.
Xiaojie “Emily” Tan, 49, Daoyou Feng, 44, and Paul Andre Michels, 54, were also killed at Youngs Asian Massage. An additional four women, identified as Soon Chung Park, 74, Suncha Kim, 69, Young Ae Yue, 63, and Hyun Jung Grant, 51, were killed at two other businesses, Gold Spa and Aromatherapy Spa.
Robert Aaron Long, the suspect, is now facing eight counts of murder and one count of aggravated assault for the shootings.
Yuan and González married last year after meeting at a Waffle House where she was a server and he was a customer, The New York Times reports. The two had an eight-month-old baby.
"That murderer only left me pain," he told Mundo Hispánico.
