ATLANTA—The Fulton County Medical Examiner has released the names of the last four Asian women police say were killed by a 21-year-old white man on a Tuesday rampage targeting three massage parlors in the Atlanta area.
Fifty-one-year-old Hyun J. Grant was killed by a gunshot wound to the head in a homicide, authorities said. Her son, 23-year-old Randy Park, told The Daily Beast on Thursday that “she was a single mother of two kids who dedicated her whole life to raising them.”
Also now identified among those lost in the tragic assault that stoked fears of anti-Asian violence: 74-year-old Soon C. Park, a woman the medical examiner said was shot in the head; Suncha Kim, a 69-year-old woman shot in the chest; and 63-year-old Yong A. Yue, a woman shot in the head.
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Sashona Fisher, a neighbor of Yue, said she was “very sweet, very friendly,” and “always took a moment to say something nice” as she walked her dog in the parking lot that fronts her townhouse in Norcross, Georgia.
Fisher, an academic adviser at a nearby university, was shocked to learn that her neighbor had been killed in the shooting that she believes “was a hate crime.”
Speaking with a reporter at his home in Norcross, a suburb of Atlanta, Robert Peterson, who identified himself as the son of Yue, told The Daily Beast that his family planned to release a statement later Friday.
Yue’s ex-husband, Mac Peterson, later told The New York Times she had moved to the U.S. from South Korea after the two met while he was serving in the military. They had two children together and Yue “was a good mother,” Peterson said. “She was always there for her kids.”
Relatives described Kim to the Times as a married grandmother with a passion for line dancing. A family member who requested anonymity told the paper Kim had moved to the U.S. from Korea to give the family “a better education and better life.”
Scott Lee, a son-in-law of Park, told the Times she had previously lived in New York and was still in close contact with relatives in New York and New Jersey.
“She got along with her family so well,” Lee was quoted as saying.
Robert Aaron Long, the 21-year-old white man charged with murder in connection with the violence, allegedly told authorities he was driven to shoot by sex addiction, not racism. But Park told The Daily Beast that was “bullshit,” echoing experts and advocates nationwide.
