Accused Atlanta shooter will not appear in court Thursday
Robert Aaron Long, the 21-year-old man accused of killing eight people in an Atlanta shooting spree earlier this week, will not appear in court Thursday as scheduled.
Long’s initial hearing was scheduled in Cherokee County Court, but the hearing has been canceled, a spokeswoman with the Cherokee County Clerk of Courts confirmed to the New York Daily News.
A spokesperson for the Cherokee County District Attorney’s Office told The News that Long’s legal counsel waived the hearing, where a judge would typically read the charges against the defendant and advises them of their rights.
No other court hearings are currently scheduled.
The state will take its case to a grand jury for indictment once the investigation is complete.
Suspect in Atlanta shootings blames sex addiction and may have ‘frequented’ massage parlors before: cops »
Long, a white man from Woodstock, Georgia, has been charged with eight counts of murder and one count of aggravated assault for his rampage Tuesday, during which four people were killed at a spa near Acworth in Cherokee County and four more people at two different spas in Midtown Atlanta.
After his family identified him from surveillance footage, police pursued Long in a high-speed chase until they captured him about 150 miles south of Atlanta around 8:30 p.m. Tuesday.
Long, the son of a youth pastor, told police that he had an “addiction to sex” and called the massage parlors a “temptation he wanted to eliminate,” officials said during a news conference Wednesday.
Xiaojie Tan, 49; Daoyou Feng, 44; Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33; and Paul Andre Michels, 54, have been identified as the four victims in Acworth, while a fifth person, 30-year-old Elcias Hernandez-Ortiz, was wounded.
