Tuesday was not the first time the street with two of the three spas targeted in shootings has witnessed horrific violence.
Next door to one of them, 24 years earlier, a bomb exploded at an LGBTQ bar, injuring four people.
This week, Gold Massage spa was one of the three attacked by a gunman. In total, eight people were killed and another wounded at the three scenes. Six of the victims were Asian women, stoking existing fear and raising debate over hate crime charges.
The spa on Piedmont Road is next to what was once the Otherside Lounge.
There, in February 1997, a bomb sent nails and the sound of canon fire into the Friday night crowd, CNN reported at the time.
Tuesday’s shootings fueled fear among Asian Americans and Asians in the US as anti-Asian hate crimes have doubled during the pandemic. The suspect alleged to have fired in Gold Massage Spa is believed to have been responsible for a series of attacks around the Atlanta-area.
In 1997, the Otherside bomb was the fourth to strike the city in seven months.
Eric Robert Rudolph was charged with the Otherside bombing and those at Centennial Olympic Park and New Woman Clinic.
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Rudolph pleaded guilty to the bombings in 2005 and was sentenced to four consecutive life terms and an additional 120 years.
Robert Long, the 21-year-old suspect in Tuesday’s shootings, faces four counts of murder and a charge of aggravated assault in Cherokee County, and four more counts of murder for the Atlanta shootings. J. Daran Burns, his attorney, said in a statement Wednesday that he met with Long at the Cherokee County Adult Detention Center Wednesday and Long “under advisement of counsel, waived his statutory right” to a first appearance hearing.
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