Capt Jay Baker also reportedly posted images on Facebook of T-shirts with a racist slogan on China and coronavirus
A Georgia sheriff’s captain has faced widespread criticism for appearing to characterise the actions of Robert Aaron Long, the 21-year-old charged with killing eight people in Atlanta, six of them women of Asian descent, as “having a really bad day”.
Speaking at a news conference on Wednesday, Capt Jay Baker of the Cherokee county sheriff’s office said investigators had interviewed Long that morning.
“They got that impression that yes, he understood the gravity of it. He was pretty much fed up, and kind of at [the] end of his rope, and yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did,” Baker said.
Baker said Long told investigators that the attacks were not racially motivated. “He apparently has an issue, what he considers a sex addiction, and sees these locations as something that allows him to go to these places, and it’s a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate,” Baker told reporters.
After the remarks, screenshots surfaced from a March 2020 Facebook post by Baker that promoted anti-Asian T-shirts.
“Place your order while they last,” Baker wrote above the photo of two T-shirts that said, “Covid 19 IMPORTED VIRUS FROM CHY-NA.
NBC
Source: The Guardian and NBC and backstory, Buzzfeed News