Atlanta police: Names of shooting victims won't be released until 'true verification' of identities

Eight people were killed Tuesday in three shootings targeting Asian spas in the metro Atlanta area, but so far, authorities have only released the names of four victims.

The first shooting took place at Young's Asian Massage in Cherokee County, where four people were killed — Delaina Yaun, 33; Paul Andre Michels, 54; Xiaojie Tan, 49; and Daoyou Feng, 44 — and another man, Elcias Hernandez-Ortiz, 30, was critically injured. The two shootings that followed were at Gold Spa and Aromatherapy Spa, businesses located across the street from each other in northeast Atlanta.

Atlanta Deputy Police Chief Charles Hampton told reporters on Thursday that investigators had a harder time making positive identifications of the victims shot at Gold Spa and Aromatherapy Spa. All four are Asian women, and Hampton said investigators are working with South Korean diplomats to try to track down their relatives.

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"We need to make sure that we have a true verification of their identities and that we make the proper next-of-kin notification," he said, before stressing to reporters that they must "respect the families that are still mourning and some who may not even know yet."