On the afternoon of March 16, , Marcus Lyon and his girlfriend dropped off their son at day care and went out for a late lunch not far from Sixes, a suburb of Atlanta that takes its name from a collection point on the Trail of Tears. The seafood restaurant where they headed stood just south of Larry McDonald Memorial Highway, named for the Georgia politician who served as president of the John Birch Society, a Cold Warβera group that viewed the civil rights movement as a communist plot.
He was faster than most of his colleagues, once making 25 deliveries in an hour, but the load was wearing him out, plus their four-year-old had been crawling into bed with them lately. Around 4 p. Just before 5 p. She took him down a narrow hallway that ran the length of the parlor to a room on the left. Lyon took off his clothes, pulled a towel over himself, and laid facedown on the massage table. No more than a few minutes had passed when they heard a gunshot. Then a second shot rang out.
Lyon dove behind the table, still undressed. Feng opened the door, and a third gunshot hit her in the head. Lyon remained hidden, waiting until the shots stopped and a doorbell quieted before he reached for his trousers and shoes.
He rushed out to his car, grabbed his 9-mm pistol purchased at a pawn shop two weeks prior, and ran back inside. Three women, all spa workers, stood wailing. They asked Lyon to call the police and rushed out.
Lyon saw another customer, Elcias Hernandez-Ortiz, walking around with blood dripping from his head. That afternoon, Hernandez-Ortiz had stopped by the strip mall, as he did every other week, to wire money to his family in Guatemala, where it supported five people. When the killer opened the door to his room, Hernandez-Ortiz got on his knees, put his hands up, and asked to be spared.
