Earlier this month, eight people, six of whom were Asian and two were white, were killed in three shooting incidents in the Atlanta area by a suspect identified as 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long.
He has been arrested and charged with eight counts of murder and one count of aggravated assault.
Long claimed that the attacks were not racially motivated, and that he had a “sexual addiction” and saw the massage parlours as a “temptation” that he wanted to “eliminate”, according to authorities.
When caught, he was on the way to Florida, where he planned to commit similar crimes, the authorities added.
The carnage came amid a troubling spike in violence against the Asian-American community — 3,800 hate incidents reported in the last year, statistics showed.
Although the motive in the carnage has not been determined by police, some public officials and anti-discrimination organisations have raised concerns over the role of racism.
Besides that, Topps, a USA based company came under severe scrutiny on Twitter after the release of a racist trading sticker card about the boy band.
The card based on BTS shows all the band members being hit by the Grammy Awards in a whack-a-mole kind of game. All members have stitches and bandages on their faces.
Later, Topps released a statement on social media saying it has removed the card of BTS.
“We hear and understand our consumers who are upset about the portrayal of BTS in our GPK Shammy Awards product and we apologise for including it,” Topps wrote.
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