the suspect in the killing spree that left eight people dead at three different spas in atlanta felt tortured by sexual addiction. >> six asian-american women who were shot and killed yesterday. >> the asian community is once again being target. the country still averaging over 50,000 new cases every day. >> when we see a plateau like that that predicts another surge. >> we are vaccinating really well. that's the good news. these variants are spreading that's the bad news. this is "new day" with alisyn camerota and john berman. >> welcome to our viewers in the united states and all around the world. this is "new day." it's thursday, march 18th, 6:00 here in new york. erica hill is here with me again. >> always good to be here. >> we have a lot going on. this is what we know this morning. the asian-american community in this country is on edge understandably. the murder rampage in georgia left eight people dead, six of them asian women. anti-asian hate crime up nearly 150% in major u.s. cities since the start of the pandemic. now, the suspect in georgia is claiming to law enforcement the killings were not racially motivated but were the result of a sexual addiction. but there are new questions about how certain officials are approaching this after a county sheriff said the suspected killer of eight people had a quote, bad day. >> a bad day. that's not only raising questions but to be frank, there's a lot of outrage around those comments. overnight, crowds gathered in solidarity in washington, d.c. calling for an end to white supremacy and anti-asian hostilities. memorials have been set up outside of the three spas where the killings took place. i want to begin our coverage with natasha chen from cherokee county. >> reporter: good morning. the suspect is being held in custody and it could be as early as today he could be arraigned. now, right now the fbi is still investigating a motive here, but in the meantime he's been charged with eight counts of murder across two counties. this morning authorities are investigating why a suspected gunman killed eight people in three atlanta area spas and whether the massacre that left six women dead can be prosecuted as a hate crime. it started around 5:00 p.m. in the spa in atlanta and left three people dead. >> do you have a description of him, ma'am? >> reporter: that desperate 911 call came from gold massage spa 30 miles from first shooting and three asian women were killed there. >> some guy came in and took the gun and a lady got hurt. i think. everybody is scared so they're hiding. >> reporter: across the street at aromatherapy spa, another asian woman killed. atlanta law enforcement is withholding the names of victims but in cherokee county, police confirmed the names of the people who lost their lives and the man who was injured. robert aaron long is now behind bars and charged with eight counts of murder. >> even though we have made an arrest, there's still a lot more work to be done. >> reporter: authorities say long told them the killings were because he had a potential sexual addiction. >> the suspect did take response for the shootings. he does claim that it was not racially motivated. >> reporter: but atlanta mayor keisha lance bottoms said it's hard to ignore that the majority of the shooting victims were asian women. >> i'm taking that with a grain of salt, this is a man who murdered eight people in cold blood so it's very difficult to believe what he says. >> this is an attack on all of us. >> reporter: grief and outrage are growing over the rise in attacks against asian-americans since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. at the white house, president joe biden condemned the acts of violence. >> very concerned because as you know i have been speaking about the brutality against asian-americans for the last couple months and i think it is very, very trouble some. >> reporter: no matter the motive, sam parks says the shooting is spreading fear not only here but in asian-american communities across the country. >> there was an attack against asian-american women and members of our community and we want to protect everyone. >> reporter: and there are a lot of questions right now on whether he could be charged with a hate crime in addition to the murder charges. especially because most of the victims are women and were specifically women of asian descent. here in georgia, the hate crime law includes the targeting not only on nationality but one's sex so a lot to go through. >> thank you, natasha chen. joining me is grace maine who is taking part on the discrimination and violence on asian-americans today. good to have you with us this morning. you know, after passage of the resolution in the fall, your voice mail was filled one racist hate-filled messages. you shared those and i want to play some of that for the viewers right now. >> i'm calming about the pigs virus, the kung fu virus or wherever it came from asia. it's not racist, it's the truth. filthy people. >> you look like a wuhan, you fat ugly fat slob. >> they're disturbing to say the least. they're unsettling and unfortunately they're not new. >> no, they're not new and thank you for having me in and covering this issue. look, i have pretty thick skin. i can -- you know, it's okay that i got those voice mails but i really do -- my heart goes out to so many families who are afraid to let their elderly parents and grandparents go outside to the supermarket for fear of being harassed. for the parents, some of who have been texting me saying they're not going to let their kids play outside anymore because they don't want them to get bullied. i just feel so sorry for the asian-american community. >> you know, there has been an outpouring of support. i would say in the last year, but certainly in the last couple of weeks as we have given more and more necessary attention to these horrific acts of hate against the asian community. the numbers are really disturbing. so we know that anti-asian hate crimes in the u.s. in major cities are up nearly 150%. despite being down overall, we are seeing here in new york city that's a lot of talk of that i know. stop aapi hate, hundreds of hate crimes reported in the last year and there's a sense that specifically when it comes to anti-asian hate that it's really underreported. you're trying to move past that and to encourage more people to speak out. do you think it's working? >> well, definitely, and i'm really thankful for the allyship has been shown and has been pouring out especially in the last few days from communities beyond the asian-american community. we are so heartened by the encouragement and the show of solidarity. you're right, we are hearing more and more reports and these incidents obviously are not new in our history, but the number of incidents have really skyrocketed in the last 12 months or so. we are pushing legislation. our community is pushing two bills. one is the no hate act and the other bill is my bill with senator hirona to analyze and to focus on the hate crimes and to empower the community to make it easier for community members and victims to report these incidents. >> do you think incidents of anti-asian hate that have been reported, that have been experienced, have been taken seriously enough? >> well, we also need to look at these incidents and crimes with a wider lens and a wider perspective. just as with the case in atlanta right now, we hope that law enforcement are doing due diligence. you know, looking at the history of the person. looking at past emails and other people that they may have harass as well. >> you know, speaking of that due diligence a lot of reaction to what we heard from the cherokee county sheriff's office and i want to play a moment. this is f-6 for the folks in the control room and get your reaction to this. >> it's still early but he does claim it was not racially motivated. he apparently has an issue, what he considers a sex addiction and sees these locations as something that allows him to go to these places and it's a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate. >> he understood the gravity of it and he was pretty much fed up. at the end of his rope and yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did. >> characterizing this as a really bad day for him and this is what he did when he was at the end of his rope, when you heard that what did it say to you? >> i hope that the sheriff in his tone and in his words that he used wasn't justifying his actions in any way. this young man had enough intent to drive i think it was over 50 miles to target an asian owned business where a majority of the employees were asian-american. he had enough intent and people don't get to do that if they're having a bad day, i'm sorry. >> representative meng, thank you for your time this morning. >> thank you. just ahead, a brand-new interview with a capitol hill police officer, a black capitol police officer, who defended the capitol during the insurrection. >> we fought against not just people who hated what we represented but they hated our skin color also. >> the racist abuse he said he experienced during that riot, next. ♪ ♪ locating your parked car with the touch of a button might seem... excessive. unless... getting lost is the whole point. ♪ ♪ hi. so you're the scientist here. does my aveeno® daily moisturizer really make my dry skin healthier in one day? 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>> it doesn't say much to me other than he did maintain an objective position. i don't know why anybody at his stature or his position he sounds more like a defense attorney than he does a county sheriff but let me say this to the people who lost their lives and their family and friends and not only in metro atlanta, but across this country in a very, very horrible place in terms of fear, in terms of their safety and not feeling like right at this particular moment they're part of this america. and i think we all have a responsibility to choose our words very carefully and also to make sure that our own stuff doesn't get in the way because we are still a nation of one and we have a responsibility at this very point and moment in time to be supportive of asian-americans who are really feeling threatened, even prior to this shooting and even more so now. >> so important and so true as you point out. as we look at what we do know with the limited information we do have at this point, the fact that the suspect's parents apparently, you know, saw this and they essentially turned him or they called and said we think this may be our son, how does that help an investigation? >> well, certainly it helps, it certainly expedited the investigation to be able to identify and track his movements and there was a lot of cooperation and coordination there in the metro area between police. and we all are glad and happy of the fact that they were able to apprehend him as quickly as they did. but it took a lot of coordination from those agencies in order to do so. >> it tells you something of his frame of mind. if his parents -- to get to seeing a picture, oh, my son may be a suspected mass shooter, tells you there are concerns there before hand and that could end up being part of the investigation. you have an op-ed and it had to do -- don lemon did an interview last night with harry dunn, a capitol hill police officer who was at the insurrection and went into depth on what he faced during that day. take a look at this. >> the black officers struggle with different as in -- like i said, we fought against not just people that were -- that hated what we represented, but they hated our skin color also. that's just a fact. and they used those words to prove that. they showed that they hated us and they hated our skin color. >> in your op-ed, you talk about this, and you basically are trying to grab america by the lapels and say, you have to pay attention to this. >> absolutely. and what the op-ed really suggests is that police is in this very peculiar place themselves as police has to decide whose side are they on, because as we all know from the january 6th episode, there were those who were part of the capitol police, who appeared to be real sympathizers of that insurrection on that particular day. and it certainly was not a good day for police and what it represents overall in this country. so here you have an african-american capitol hill police officer who you can just look at from that interview and tell that he himself has been traumatized not just from the fight that they had to have over a number of hours, but the name calling, the spitting on. those who say they support law and order, but police officers were beaten with flags, nazi flags, blue lives matter flags and they came up under attack, but for officers of colors, the african-american officers, they suffered even a worse attack of verbally and physically because of the type of individuals and the ideologies of those that were there on that scene that particular day. so we're going to have to do better because as police departments across the country, the majority go out and do it right. but for those who don't know what side they're on they need to figure it out real fast. >> they do. as you're following along on that day, following on social media, you're seeing the reaction, this is not who we are but i saw a lot of this is who we are. do you think there's been enough reflection on the fact this is who we are as a country and it has needed to be addressed for hundreds of years? do you think it's starting? >> well, i think what's being revealed to us as a nation, to all of us, we have this responsibility that we can be better than what we are. yes, what you're seeing is who we really are. we don't need to minimize it. we don't need to excuse it. we need to confront it and deal with it. that's the only way to move forward and we need to acknowledge things we could have done better as a nation so that we can continue to move forward. we're still a very young nation. we're still a very young nation and we made significant gains and i don't want to minimize that, but we still see in our communities across this country, across this state, we have divided ourselves by democratic parties. there's -- there's out there right now that suggest we're more divided by being democrats and republicans than we are by race. that's scary. it's scary enough by race. but we have to do better. we can do better, but we need to acknowledge we truly have to be one nation under god because that's what's going to take -- that's what's going to take us where we need to go. but separatists and what we're seeing, we can no longer do. thanks, john. >> as always, we appreciate you being with us. thank you for sharing your thoughts this morning. >> thank you for having me. thank you. so how common is it for someone who's already had coronavirus to get infected again? 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( horn blaring ) this morning 17 states are seeing a rise in new coronavirus cases. the orange and red states there on your map, two of them, alabama and delaware, are that deep red that means an increase of more than 50% of average new cases in the last week. cnn's adrian broadus is live outside a mass vaccination tent in detroit this morning. >> reporter: good morning to you. the cases of covid in michigan are rising faster than anywhere else in the nation. jennifer morris fears if this trend continues, michigan could see a reversal and all of the progress they've made. a concerning rise in coronavirus cases as vaccination efforts nationwide are ramping up. >> i think that we are on the cusp of that fourth surge. we now have the more transmissible variants becoming dominant here in the u.s. very quickly. >> reporter: the united states is averaging at least 50,000 new cases per day. and 17 states reported an increase in new covid cases compared to the week before. michigan has seen nearly a 50% increase in new covid cases since last week. dr. jennifer morris, medical director of the health department, contributes the spike to a list of factors including covid fatigue, rolling back restrictions, failure to wear masks and the variant first identified in the uk. michigan has the second highest number of confir