The war within Robert Aaron Long was evident for years.

A unitary theory about what brought Long — now facing murder charges in the shootings of eight people, six of them Asian women — to three Atlanta-area spas on a chilly Tuesday evening is as elusive as the explanations the 21-year-old repeatedly sought for his own troubles. What is clear is that those who spent time with Long in recent years often saw a life in severe disruption.

That wasn’t always the case. At Sequoyah High School in Canton, Ga., Long, who went by his middle name and graduated in 2017, kept a low profile. He played the drums, carried a Bible and attended meetings of a Christian student club. Outside of school, he hunted deer, played video games and traveled with his church youth group.

In an Instagram bio that the social media company has since removed, he summed himself up as “Pizza, guns, drums, music, family, and God. It’s a pretty good life.”

But over the past four years, Long’s life turned toward the tumultuous. He started college classes and left after one year. He believed he was straying from his faith, telling friends that he was fixated on sex to the extent that he thought he was addicted. His relationship with a girlfriend collapsed after she found out that he frequented massage businessejavascript:void(0);s, according to his roommate. His bond with his parents frayed; on the night before the shootings, they threw him out of their house, according to police.

“I don’t say this callously: I don’t know what’s happened in Aaron to get to this point,” Cottrell said. What happened at the spas “doesn’t seem in any way like the young man I knew.

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