A SURVIVOR of the Atlanta spa shootings called his wife moments after the rampage saying “I have been shot!”
Elcias Hernandez-Ortiz, 30, was the only person to have survived the massacre at Young’s Asian Massage in Acworth, desperately called his wife for help before passing out.
Hernandez-Ortiz was wounded in his forehead, throat, lungs and stomach after Robert Aaron Long, 21, allegedly opened fire in Young’s Asian Massage near Woodstock, just before 5pm on Tuesday.
Speaking to the Washington Post, Hernandez-Ortiz recalled calling his wife, Flor Gonzalez, in the frantic phone call.
He told her: “I have been shot! Please come! I need you!”
Police say Long killed four people at that parlor, then drove to the Atlanta suburb of Buckhead, where he opened fire at another two spas, killing four more people between them, police have said.
Hernandez-Ortiz was the lone survivor.
The auto repair shop owner was heading to a store next to Young’s Asian Massage to wire money back to family in his native Guatemala.
But he crossed Long’s path and was gunned down.
After receiving his call for help, his 27-year-old wife, grabbed the couple’s nine-year-old daughter, Yoseline, and rushed to the scene.
Here she saw her husband lying on the ground, amid a sea of first responders.
“It was the most horrible thing,” she told the Post. “I just can’t understand why anyone would do something like this.”
Long would go on to target two more parlors in Atlanta, with eight people shot dead, including six Asian women at three parlors.
He then went on the run and was driving to Florida to target porn-industry locations when he was arrested 150 miles south of Atlanta.
Cops later rammed his Hyundai off the road and arrested and detained him.
Long has now been charged on Wednesday with eight counts of murder and one count of aggravated assault.
Long told police the attack was not racially motivated.
He claimed to have a sex addiction, and authorities said he apparently lashed out at what he saw as sources of temptation.
All the targeted massage parlors, Long frequently visited, it’s reported.
Police, however, have said they are still working to determine a motive.
Former roommate Tyler Bayless, 35, told Reuters that he spent several months living in an Atlanta halfway house for recovering addicts with the suspect.
Bayless, who says he was being treated for drug addiction, said he was in a halfway house named Maverick Recovery with Long in late 2019 and early 2020, and last saw Long in February 2020.
He said Long had been treated for sex addiction and that he frequented massage parlors “for explicitly sexual activity.”
Bayless said Long was “deeply religious” and would become “very emotionally distraught that he frequented these places.”
