Homicide detectives on Thursday weighed the possible motives of a gunman accused of fatally shooting several Asian women in Atlanta-area spas.

On Tuesday night, the 21-year-old white man opened fire at three Atlanta-area massage parlors, killed at least eight people, including six Asian women. He was later captured 150 miles south of Atlanta after a manhunt, authorities said, adding he was headed for Florida when he was apprehended, perhaps to carry out further shootings.

Investigators say it's too early to say whether the crime was racially motivated. They pointed to the suspect's claim of a potential "sex addiction".

Suspect claimed he killed to eliminate 'sex temptation'

Captain Jay Baker of the Cherokee County Sheriff's Department said on Wednesday that Robert Aaron Long, the suspect, had confessed to the shootings and indicated he had a sex addiction and "wanted to eliminate" the temptation the establishments represented to him. But Baker said that the suspect didn't admit the shooting was racially motivated.

Investigators have determined that Long had previously frequented both spas in Atlanta where he is accused of opening fire with a 9mm gun he purchased earlier in the day.

A former roommate who spent several months living with Long in a halfway house for recovering addicts said Long had been treated for sex addiction, was "deeply religious" and would become "very emotionally distraught that he frequented" spas for "explicitly sexual activity."

Though the confession suggested that the white man's sexual frustration led him to commit violence, numerous experts and civil rights advocates argued that it's no coincidence that six of the eight victims were Asian women, speculating that the killings were motivated at least in part by rising anti-Asian sentiment since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Some experts say the suspect's remarks also reflected the deep-rooted misogyny and stereotypes that are all too familiar for Asian and Asian American women: They're docile and submissive. Besides, these women often work in the service sector, which makes them even more vulnerable to violence.

Last Tuesday, ABC reported that a 25-year-old Asian American mother was spat on by a male in Queens, New York City. She was holding her baby when the male called her a "Chinese virus" and spit in her direction.

Chi-Chi Zhang, an Asian-American woman living in Cambridge, Massachusetts and whose family came to the U.S. when she was seven, described discussing race and hate crimes with her two young daughters, aged two and four.

"We started to talk about what our escape plan would be if we were to be attacked on the street," she said. "How is that a normal conversation to have with a two-year-old?"

Zhang said that for much of her life she had been taught to conform to the idea of a "model minority" but added that the concept of keeping one's head down was "the reason nobody pays attention to crimes against us."

"Nothing is off the table for our investigation," Atlanta Deputy Police Chief Charles Hampton said at a news conference in response to a question about whether they look at the killings as possible hate crimes.

Hate crimes against Asian Americans rose 149%

In Washington, U.S. President Joe Biden ordered the U.S. national flag be flown at half-staff at the White House to honor the victims of Tuesday's shooting rampage. He and Vice President Kamala Harris will visit Atlanta on Friday to discuss "the ongoing attacks and threats against the community."

According to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, the incidence of hate crimes against Asian Americans rose by 149% in 2020 in 16 major cities compared with 2019 despite the fact that the overall racial hatred crimes decreased by seven percent in 2020.

Another data compiled by Stop AAPI Hate, a coalition of Asian-American community groups reported that there were more than 2,800 reports of anti-Asian hate incidents nationwide linked to COVID-19 between March and December of last year. Analysts have said the figure is almost certainly understated given many incidents go unreported.

White House official Steve Cohen on Thursday put the number at 3,800, describing Asians being subjected to "verbal harassment, being spat at, slapped in the face, lit on fire, slashed with a box cutter or shoved violently to the ground."

"For many Asian-Americans, Tuesday's shocking events felt like the inevitable culmination of a year in which there were nearly 3,800 reported incidents of anti-Asian hate," Representative Steve Cohen said.

Andrew Yang, a former Democratic presidential hopeful who is running for mayor of New York told a press conference in New York that "I've been Asian all my life, and I remember vividly growing up with this constant sense of invisibility, mockery, disdain, a sense that you cannot be American if you have an Asian face."

"But this has metastasized into something new and deadly and virulent and hateful," he said.

Civil rights advocates have connected the rise in incidents to the COVID-19 pandemic, which was first reported in China. Some Americans, including Republican former President Donald Trump, called the coronavirus the "China virus," "the China plague" and even the "kung flu."

Trump even repeated anti-Chinese slurs during an interview with Fox News on the night that these Asian women were shot dead in Georgia.

"I don't think it's a coincidence that Trump spent the better part of a year using a virus as a slur against Chinese people while hate crimes against Asian Americans spiked by 150 percent," Vox reporter Aaron Rupar tweeted.

Karthick Ramakrishnan, founder and director of demographic data and policy research at nonprofit AAPI Data, said that research on Trump's use of racist language in reference to other groups shows that his language did have a profound impact on how people behave toward ethnic minority groups.

The Atlanta killings have prompted police departments to step up patrols and visibility in Asian American communities around the country, including New York City, Chicago, Atlanta and San Francisco.

(With input from agencies)