WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to Atlanta Friday to meet with Asian American community leaders and state lawmakers in the wake of the spa shootings that left eight people dead, six of whom were women of Asian descent.
The visit, their first joint trip since taking office, had initially been scheduled as part of the administration’s “Help is Here” tour promoting the $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief package. But the trip took on new weight after the shooting, with the White House announcing Thursday that the political event would be postponed.
Biden and Harris plan to meet with Asian American community leaders at Emory University, where the president will deliver remarks in the late afternoon.
Biden and the vice president are also expected to visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is headquartered in Atlanta, to receive an update on the fight against the pandemic. they plan to meet with former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams as well, who has “played a leading role in voting access and voter protection, and she will be an important partner in taking action on this important issue moving forward.”
March 19, 202100:59
Abrams is widely credit with leading voter mobilization effort that flipped the state blue in last year’s election, making Biden the first Democratic presidential candidate to win the state since 1992. Democratic victories in the Senate runoff races followed, giving the party control of the Senate.
But the shootings, which sparked a fresh wave of fear and anger among the Asian American community in a year that has seen a sharp increase in anti-Asian attacks, have become a primary focus of the trip. Some local officials and community advocates are calling on law enforcement officials to swiftly characterize the killings as a hate crime.
Biden and Harris, who is of Indian descent, have deferred the matter to law enforcement, who continue to investigate the suspect’s motive, while also offering their support and sympathy to the Asian American community.
Biden said Wednesday that he was “making no connection at this moment to the motivation of the killer” and would wait for the investigation to conclude. “Whatever the motivation,” Biden said “I know Asian Americans, they are very concerned, because as you know I have been speaking about the brutality against Asian Americans, and it’s troubling.”
A gunman shot and killed eight people at three spas in the Atlanta area Tuesday night. Cherokee County Sheriff’s Capt. Jay Baker said that after a brief manhunt, Robert Aaron Long, 21, was arrested and later confessed to the attack.
Long was charged with eight counts of murder and homicide and one count of aggravated assault, police said Wednesday.
Baker said at a news conference Wednesday that Long claimed the attack was not racially motivated. The suspect told investigators that he had a “sex addiction” and that he saw the spas as “a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate,” Baker said. Law enforcement officials said Long was believed to have previously visited the spas he targeted.
Democrats and community leaders in Georgia have said that race cannot be ignored as a motive, especially considering that Anti-Asian American hate incidents have dramatically increased during the pandemic, with a disproportionate number of attacks directed at women.
“Our investigation is looking at everything, so nothing is off the table,” Deputy Atlanta Police Chief Charles Hampton Jr. said Thursday at a news conference.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
