Paul Andre Michels, a 54-year-old white male, was a handyman who had recently found a renewed sense of purpose doing work for Young's Asian Massage near Acworth, Georgia. An Army veteran and a married man of over 20 years, he was known by friends and family as a good-hearted and hardworking individual. He had previously owned a home security business and was even contemplating a new venture into the spa industry himself. On March 16, 2021, he was at the massage parlor, having just built a shelf, when his life was abruptly cut short.
That afternoon, a 21-year-old man named Robert Aaron Long entered the establishment. After receiving a service, Long emerged from a restroom, brandished a 9mm handgun, and fatally shot Paul Andre Michels once in the head as he was leaning over a counter using his cellphone. The gunman then continued his rampage, killing three other people at that location before driving to Atlanta and killing four more people at two other spas. In total, eight people lost their lives in the shooting spree. Michels was one of nine siblings and had grown up in Detroit before moving to the Atlanta area more than two decades prior to his death.
The shooter, Robert Aaron Long, was apprehended by law enforcement later the same day. During interviews with investigators, Long claimed he was motivated by a sex addiction and that he targeted the spas to eliminate what he saw as a source of temptation. This explanation, however, has been a point of contention, with prosecutors in Fulton County arguing that the attacks were also driven by race and gender, as six of the eight victims were women of Asian descent.
In the legal proceedings that followed, Robert Aaron Long pleaded guilty to the murders that occurred in Cherokee County, which included the death of Paul Andre Michels. For these crimes, he was sentenced to four consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole, plus an additional 35 years. He faces separate charges in Fulton County, where the district attorney is seeking the death penalty and has pursued hate crime charges. That case remains pending.
