On the evening of March 16, 2021, eight people were killed in Cherokee County, Georgia, and in the city of Atlanta. Six of the dead were women of Asian descent. Four died in Cherokee County: Xiaojie Tan, Daoyou Feng, Delaina Yaun and Paul Michels. Four died in Atlanta: Suncha Kim, Soon Chung Park, Hyun Jung Grant and Yong Ae Yue. A man in Cherokee County was injured and survived. That night Robert Aaron Long, a 21-year-old from Woodstock, was taken into custody in Crisp County, in south Georgia.
Long has been convicted of half of those deaths. On July 27, 2021, he pleaded guilty in Cherokee County Superior Court to every count of the Cherokee indictment, including four counts of murder, and Chief Judge Ellen McElyea sentenced him to four consecutive terms of life without parole and a further 35 years. The four deaths in Atlanta are a separate prosecution. A Fulton County grand jury indicted him on 19 counts, including murder, felony murder and domestic terrorism; he has pleaded not guilty; and the Fulton County District Attorney, Fani Willis, is seeking the death penalty along with a sentence enhancement under Georgia's hate-crime law, on the State's position that race and gender played a part in the killings. No court has ruled on that allegation. More than five years on, the Fulton County case had not come to trial.
Long was 21 in March 2021, and 22 by the time he entered his pleas that summer. He came from Woodstock, Georgia.
The deaths came over the course of a single evening, at three locations: one in Cherokee County and two in Atlanta, which lies in Fulton County. Because the killings crossed a county line, they fell to two sets of police, two grand juries and two elected district attorneys, and the case has run on two tracks ever since. In Cherokee County the investigation belonged to the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office and the Cherokee County Marshal's Office; in Atlanta, to the Atlanta Police Department. The FBI and the Georgia State Patrol joined the work that night.
Of the eight dead, six were women of Asian descent, four of them in Atlanta. Within a day the question of motive had reached the White House. President Joe Biden said on March 17 that "the investigation is ongoing and the question of motivation is still to be determined." That question would shape every later stage of the case, and it divided the two prosecutors who inherited it.
Delaina Yaun was 33 and lived in Acworth. She was a wife and the mother of two children, a teenage son and a baby daughter. At the sentencing hearing in July 2021 her sister described a woman whose life was organized around the people closest to her. "Her family came first," she said. "Everything was her family."
Xiaojie Tan, known as Emily, was 49 and lived in Kennesaw. Her daughter, speaking after her death, said that if she could have one more conversation with her mother, she knew what she would say first: "I would tell her that I love her."
Daoyou Feng was 44. Those who knew her remembered her as "kind and quiet."
Paul Andre Michels was 54 and lived in Atlanta. He was born in Detroit and had lived in Atlanta since 1995. His family remembered him as a "dedicated husband and brother," and his widow spoke in court of their 24 years of marriage. He was the only man among the eight dead.
These four deaths, and the injury to the man who survived, are the ones for which Long stands convicted.
Suncha Kim was 69. She had a husband, two children and three grandchildren. One of her granddaughters remembered her as "pure hearted and the most selfless woman I knew."
Soon Chung Park was 74, the oldest of the eight. She had settled in Atlanta to be near her friends, and the people around her described her as fit and active.
Hyun Jung Grant was 51, a single mother who raised two sons. One of them wrote that she had "dedicated her whole life to providing for my brother and I," and called her "one of my best friends." The other remembered her as "playful and a young spirit."
Yong Ae Yue was 63 and the mother of sons. Her youngest said that she "was always kind-hearted and willing to help everyone she encountered," and that she loved to cook Korean food for her family and friends.
These four deaths are the subject of the Fulton County indictment. Long has pleaded not guilty to them, and in law he is accused of them, not convicted.
Long was taken into custody on the night of March 16, 2021, in Crisp County, Georgia, by the Crisp County Sheriff's Office, which was working with the agencies already engaged in Cherokee County and Atlanta. The arrest came within hours of the deaths.
Charges followed quickly on both sides of the county line. The Atlanta Police Department charged him with four counts of murder. The Cherokee County Sheriff's Office charged him with four counts of murder and one count of aggravated assault, the latter for the man who survived. The Cherokee sheriff's office said that Long had admitted the killings in both Cherokee County and Atlanta. The statements he gave investigators after his arrest later became a central pretrial issue in the Fulton County case, where the defense would argue that they were involuntary and should be kept from a jury.
On May 11, 2021, eight weeks after the deaths, grand juries in both counties returned indictments on the same day.
The Cherokee County indictment ran to 23 counts, among them malice murder, felony murder, attempted murder and aggravated assault. The Fulton County indictment ran to 19 counts, among them murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, domestic terrorism and a further count. On the day of the Fulton indictment Willis filed notice that she intended to seek the death penalty and also to seek an enhanced sentence under Georgia's hate-crime statute, a law then less than a year old.
The two indictments set the counties on different paths. In Cherokee County, prosecutors under District Attorney Shannon Wallace had also prepared to seek a death sentence, but they were open to resolving the case by a plea. In Fulton County, Willis made plain that she was not. On July 19, 2021, her office moved to have Long transferred into Fulton County custody. On July 21, with a Cherokee County hearing on the calendar, she told reporters what that meant to her: "In my world that means they've reached a deal."
The hearing took place on July 27, 2021, in Cherokee County Superior Court, before Chief Judge Ellen McElyea. Long pleaded guilty to all of the charges in the Cherokee indictment, including four counts of murder. Wallace and her chief assistant district attorney, Susan Treadaway, handled the case for the State.
Wallace explained why her office had given up the death penalty it had planned to seek. A plea brought justice quickly, she said, and it spared the families years of appeals that a death sentence would almost certainly bring. The families she had been able to reach, she said, wanted that outcome. When it was done she said: "We said from the beginning that we would work to bring justice for these victims, and we have."
The prosecutor also addressed the question that had followed the case since March. Her office, she said, had found no evidence of racial bias in the Cherokee County killings. She told the court that had the case gone to trial, she would have argued that bias against women played a part, but that such an argument would not have changed the sentence available. Before accepting the plea, Judge McElyea noted that two of the four people who died in Cherokee County were not of Asian descent and that one of them was a man.
McElyea then imposed sentence: four consecutive terms of life without the possibility of parole, plus 35 years, with Long remanded to the custody of the Georgia Department of Corrections. Under Georgia law, life without parole means imprisonment for the rest of a prisoner's natural life. Long's Cherokee County lawyers said afterward that they hoped Fulton County would accept a similar resolution. It did not.
The plea hearing gave the families of the Cherokee County dead their first chance to speak in a courtroom with Long present. Paul Michels's widow described what that evening had done to her own life: "A part of me died with him that day." Delaina Yaun's sister spoke of a woman whose family came before everything else.
The man who had been injured and survived addressed the court through an interpreter. He spoke for himself and for those around him. "We are all still suffering," he said.
In Fulton County, Willis said her decision to seek the death penalty had the "complete support" of those families.
On July 28, 2021, the day after the Cherokee sentence, Long was moved to the Fulton County jail. On August 30, Willis filed formal notice of the hate-crime sentence enhancement. She described herself as "very comfortable in my decision to request sentencing enhancements based on the fact that race and gender played a role." This remains the prosecution's allegation. Under the Georgia statute, no enhancement can apply unless a jury first convicts on the underlying charges and then finds, as a separate question, that the defendant chose his victims because of a protected characteristic. No Fulton County jury has heard the case.
On September 28, 2021, Long appeared before Fulton County Superior Court Judge Ural Glanville, waived formal arraignment and pleaded not guilty. He was represented by lawyers from the Georgia Capital Defender's office, the state agency that defends people facing the death penalty. Willis had estimated in 2021 that the case would take 24 to 36 months to reach trial.
That estimate did not hold. The defense challenged the indictment, the State's evidence and the death notice itself, and each challenge took months to resolve.
In 2022 the defense filed a group of motions, including a motion to dismiss the State's pursuit of the death penalty, which the court expected to require evidence and testimony. The defense asked for more time because its lawyers had another trial scheduled, and the court granted a continuance: the State was given until July 30 to respond, and three weeks of hearings were set aside from October 17, potentially running to November 4. Long's lawyers said they were "committed to moving towards a resolution" while meeting their legal obligations in a capital case. Willis gave no sign of withdrawing the death notice.
Among the defense's central arguments was Long's age. He had been 21 on March 16, 2021, and his lawyers asked the court to hold that the death penalty could not lawfully apply to a person that young at the time of the offense. By March 2023, two years after the deaths, the case was still in motions, and Glanville's calendar was occupied by another lengthy trial.
In 2023 the court again postponed hearings at the defense's request, without objection from the State, and set new dates: evidentiary motions on September 28 and 29, and further hearings on October 20 and 27. The defense argued that the State's pursuit of death "imposes an extraordinary burden" on the court, the prosecution and defense counsel. It also raised a concern about the attention surrounding another Fulton County prosecution of that year, the indictment of former President Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants. Long, his lawyers wrote, "fears the aggressive and saturating media coverage will overflow into Mr. Long's case." The same filing stated that the District Attorney shared the defense's concern about safety. The State, for its part, signaled that it intended to put before a Fulton jury both Long's guilty plea in Cherokee County and the statements he made to investigators after his arrest.
In March 2024 Glanville ruled on the age motions and on a related challenge to the way Georgia administers the death penalty. He denied both. "Neither the federal nor state constitutions prohibit the application of the death penalty," he wrote, to a defendant who was 21 at the time of the crime. The ruling cleared the State to continue its capital prosecution. Long was 24. Over the same period the defense also lost motions concerning the grand jury and the presence of cameras in the courtroom.
On March 10, 2025, Glanville turned to the statements. The defense had argued that what Long told investigators after his arrest was not given voluntarily; the prosecution opposed the motions. "I'm going to deny the defendant's motions and admit the statements the defendant made," the judge said from the bench. Another hearing was set for late April 2025.
On January 12, 2026, Glanville denied, in all its parts, a further defense motion to suppress evidence gathered during the investigation. By then the remaining disputes were narrowing, and the case was approaching the point at which, in a Georgia death-penalty prosecution, pretrial rulings can go to the Supreme Court of Georgia for review before a trial begins.
Then the defense team itself came apart. Georgia law requires a defendant facing the death penalty to be represented by two attorneys qualified to try capital cases. Long's lead counsel left the Capital Defender's office, and he was left with one qualified lawyer. On May 28, 2026, at a brief status hearing, Glanville halted the case. "We're at an impasse," he said, and he explained the reason plainly: "I can't do anything, and the court can't do anything, until we have two qualified counsel to represent Mr. Long." He ruled that no further hearings could be scheduled until the problem was solved. Long was 26.
A former DeKalb County district attorney, Robert James, said at the time that the rule exists to ensure that "the individual facing the death penalty has the necessary representation." He acknowledged the cost in time. "Everyone wants things to move fast. They want things to be expedient," he said, while maintaining that the result had to be just.
The gap was filled within days. On June 1, 2026, two lawyers joined the defense: Nathanial Studelska of the Georgia Public Defender Council and Karlyn Skall of Fulton County. With two qualified counsel in place, the case could move again, and on June 2 the court confirmed that it would.
The new lawyers did not want it to move quickly. They told the court that, joining a case more than five years old, they had to "start from square one," and they asked first for as much as a year to prepare, then for nine to twelve months. Prosecutors asked the judge to allow no more than three. On June 29, 2026, Glanville denied the longer delay. "The timing is horrible," he said of the change in counsel, and he described the cost bluntly: "We're nine to 12 months behind." He set the next status hearing for October 6, 2026.
As of June 29, 2026, Long remained accused, and untried, in the Fulton County case, where the State continued to seek the death penalty and a hate-crime sentence enhancement. No trial date had been set. The outcome of the October 6, 2026 status hearing is not on record. In Cherokee County he is serving four consecutive sentences of life without parole and 35 years, and no appeal or other challenge to that plea is on record. He has been held in a Georgia state prison.
On March 16, 2026, the fifth anniversary of the deaths, state lawmakers gathered at the Georgia State Capitol to remember the eight people who died. State Representative Michelle Au said: "Those we lost were people who were deeply loved and needed."
The sentence enhancement Willis seeks rests on a law that did not exist a year before the killings. Georgia's earlier hate-crime statute was struck down by the Supreme Court of Georgia in 2004 as unconstitutionally vague, and for sixteen years the state had none. Governor Brian Kemp signed House Bill 426 into law on June 26, 2020. The law does not create a separate offense. It adds penalties to an existing crime when the defendant is shown to have chosen the victim because of race, religion, disability, gender, sexual orientation or national origin. The question of bias is decided by the jury, after a verdict on the underlying charge. Willis said in 2021 that her office was among the first in Georgia to use the new law.
The domestic terrorism charge in the Fulton County indictment comes from section 16-11-221 of the Official Code of Georgia. Domestic terrorism is a felony under that section, and where death results it carries a sentence of death, life without parole or life imprisonment.
A death sentence in Georgia can be imposed only by a jury. Under section 17-10-31, the jury must find at least one statutory aggravating circumstance and must recommend death. If the jury cannot agree on a sentence, the judge imposes life or life without parole. Life without parole means confinement for the natural life of the prisoner. The same capital framework explains the two-lawyer requirement that stopped the Fulton County case in May 2026.
The structure of the prosecution also reflects the geography of the killings. Because the deaths occurred in two counties, each county's district attorney had independent authority over the cases within it. One chose a negotiated plea and a sentence of life without parole; the other chose to seek death and to add the state's new hate-crime enhancement. The two decisions were made weeks apart, about the same defendant and the same evening.
The central unresolved question is the one Biden described on March 17, 2021: motive. Fulton County prosecutors allege that race and gender played a part, and they have filed notice of a hate-crime enhancement on that basis. That is the State's allegation. No court and no jury has found that bias motivated any of the eight killings, and the enhancement can be considered only if a Fulton jury first convicts Long of the underlying charges.
The two prosecutors have not taken the same view. The Cherokee County District Attorney said her office found no evidence of racial bias in the Cherokee killings, while stating that she would have argued bias against women at trial. The Cherokee judge accepted the plea after observing that two of the four Cherokee dead were not of Asian descent and that one was a man. In Fulton County, all four of the dead were women of Asian descent.
Long's guilt in the Atlanta deaths is likewise unproven in law. He has pleaded not guilty to the Fulton County indictment. The prosecution intends to rely on his Cherokee County plea and on statements he gave after his arrest, which the court has ruled admissible. The defense has contested the voluntariness of those statements and the lawfulness of the death penalty for a defendant who was 21, and it lost both arguments at the trial-court level; those rulings remain open to review by the Supreme Court of Georgia.
No jury heard the Cherokee County case. Long was convicted there on his own guilty plea, entered before Judge McElyea.
March 16, 2021: Eight people are killed in Cherokee County and in Atlanta, Georgia; a man in Cherokee County is injured and survives. Robert Aaron Long, 21, is taken into custody that night in Crisp County.
March 2021: Atlanta police charge Long with four counts of murder; the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office charges him with four counts of murder and one of aggravated assault. President Joe Biden says the question of motivation is still to be determined.
May 11, 2021: Grand juries indict Long in Cherokee County (23 counts) and Fulton County (19 counts). Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis files notice to seek the death penalty and a hate-crime sentence enhancement.
July 19, 2021: Fulton County prosecutors move to transfer Long into Fulton custody.
July 27, 2021: Long pleads guilty in Cherokee County Superior Court to all charges, including four counts of murder, and is sentenced to four consecutive terms of life without parole plus 35 years.
July 28, 2021: Long is moved to the Fulton County jail.
August 30, 2021: Willis files formal notice of the hate-crime sentence enhancement.
September 28, 2021: Long pleads not guilty in Fulton County Superior Court before Judge Ural Glanville.
2022: The defense files pretrial motions, including a motion to dismiss the death penalty; hearings are postponed to October and November.
2023: Hearings are postponed again at the defense's request and reset for September and October.
March 2024: Glanville rules that Long's age at the time of the offense does not bar the death penalty and rejects a challenge to Georgia's capital procedure.
March 10, 2025: Glanville rules Long's statements to investigators admissible.
January 12, 2026: Glanville denies a defense motion to suppress evidence.
March 16, 2026: State lawmakers mark the fifth anniversary at the Georgia State Capitol.
May 28, 2026: Glanville halts the Fulton County case because Long has only one qualified capital defense lawyer.
June 1, 2026: Two new defense lawyers join the case.
June 29, 2026: Glanville denies the defense request for a delay of nine to twelve months and sets a status hearing for October 6, 2026.