county official with a post erased in which he shared a t-shirt blaming china for the coronavirus saying the suspects in the shooting just had a bad day. he does claim it was not racially motivated. i spoke with investigators that, yes, he understood the gravity of it and was pretty much fed up, at the end of his rope and yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did. this was a really bad day for the victims too. today, celebrities are speaking out. testifying on capitol hill after speaking to nbc. this man targeted places where asian-americans were working. you don t have to peal the layers back far. i ll speak to activist coming up and with president biden and vice president harris. the president has addressed the shootings on wednesday. i know americans are very concerned. as you know, i ve been speaking about brutality against asian-americans for months and i thinks it very, very trouble some. joining me now from atlanta, nbc news correspon
looking at everything to make sure that we discover and determine what the motive of our homicides were. again, it s just very important to let you know that we are not done. in most cases of homicides, we don t have a quick apprehension. there s usually a lengthy investigation, especially when there s involving multiple victims. and so again, we re still working very diligently to ascertain all the facts so we can have a successful prosecution because that s what s most important now. so i was hoping that we would be able to release the names of the victims, but we are not able to do that at this time. and the reason is we need to make sure that we have a true verification of their identities, and that we made the proper next of kin notification. so again, i thought we were going to be able to do that, and out of respect of the lives and of the family, we want to make sure that we do that privately before we release the names of our victims publicly. again, you know, we can
come to the u.s. amid the growing crisis of children at the border. welcome to our viewers in the united states and around the world, we have reports this morning from seoul, the pentagon, capitol hill and rome. this is early start, i m christine romans. and i m laura jarrett. it s wednesday, march 17th, it s 5:00 a.m. in new york and we start this morning with the big breaking news. a suspect is in custody after eight people were killed in shootings at three massage parlours in the atlanta area. now, authorities have not offered a motive yet, but at least six of the victims were asian in about the span of an hour eight people were killed at those three atlanta area spas spread across three miles. the attacks took place in quick secession, the fbi is assisting authorities in atlanta and cherokee county. here is a spokesperson for the chairy county s office. it s pretty unusual. as i mentioned earlier, in 2020 we had one homicide in cherokee county, we have had at leas
eight people are dead and one suspect is in custody after shootings at three metro area massage parlors. four of the victims are of korean ethnicity. we heard numerous gunshots coming from across the street. police are investigating the theory that all the cases are connected. average new covid case counts are rising in as many states as they are falling. we are just starting to turn the corner and where this goes depends on us protecting ourselves and others. we re asking for another wave. this is new day with alisyn camerota and john berman. welcome to our viewers in the united states and all around the world. this is new day, it s wednesday, march 17th, 6:00. erica hill is with me. we have details of new shootings at atlanta massage parlors that led eight people dead and this has led to increased security across the country. one suspect, 21-year-old robert aaron long is in custody. police say it s extremely likely that one person did carry out all of thes
custody. there s a picture there. right now the motive is unknown. it is unclear if the attacks were racially motivated. but we should know police are ramping up security in asian-american communities as a precaution. president biden has been briefed on the shootings, and at this hour he returns to the white house. we ll bring you any live comments. also today, concerns of another covid surge. cases are climbing in more than one dozen states. the cdc is sounding the alarm on two variants in california. we ll get to that in a moment. let s begin on this tragic shooting spree. our ryan young joins us this morning in atlanta. what do you know about the victims, eight total, six of them asian. what can you tell us? reporter: so far, very little information is coming out about the victims except, besides their races. of course, what we ve been told so far is at least six of the people killed are asian. of course, we re trying to move forward with parts of this investigation. w