JUST IN: Police Identify Suspect in Mass Shootings That Killed Eight in Atlanta Area

Local law enforcement have identified a suspect, who is in custody, that is allegedly connected to the three mass shootings that has killed eight and wounded another in the Atlanta area.

“We have this breaking news out of the Atlanta suburbs this evening,” MSNBC anchor Brian Williams reported. “A 21-year-old suspect is in custody after a string of shootings at three separate locations, all of them local strip mall-style day spas.”

The suspect, identified as Robert Aaron Long, of Woodstock, Georgia, was apprehended by police around 8:30 p.m. about 150 miles south of Atlanta, according a Reuters report on the investigation. 

In Atlanta, police officers responding to a call of a “robbery in progress” shortly before 6 p.m. local time arrived at a beauty spa to find three women shot dead, Police Chief Rodney Bryant told reporters.

While investigating the initial shooting report the officers were called from a second spa across the street where a further victim was found dead of a gunshot wound, Bryant said.

While law enforcement officials did not offer up a motive for Long’s multiple attacks, six of the fatalities appeared to be Asian women. The other two killed reportedly include a white man and white woman.

A police captain from Cherokee County, Georgia, where the first attack occurred, said that investigators from both his department and in Atlanta were “very confident” Long was the gunman involved in all of the killings.

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.