Hyun Jung Grant was one of them killed eight people by a man who attacked a string of spas in the Atlanta area on Tuesday. She was also a single mother of two boys, who are now picking up the pieces.
Randy Park, her oldest son, says he now has the responsibility of planning his mother’s funeral and taking care of his younger brother. The 22-year-old started a GoFundMe page with a goal of $ 20,000 for rent, food, bills and other expenses, and in the two days since the fundraiser was posted, it has raised more than $ 2.4 million.
“To be honest, I don’t have time to grieve,” he wrote on the fundraising website. It’s just my brother and I in the United States. The rest of my family is in South Korea and can’t come. ‘
Grant was one of six Asian women shot in Tuesday’s attack. Officials said the suspect claimed the shootings were not racially motivated and saw the spas as a temptation he wanted to eliminate.
The suspect, Robert Aaron Long, has been charged with eight murders. The shootings have not been ruled out as a hate crime.
The other victims are Delaina Ashley Yaun, Yong Ae Yue, Suncha Kim, Xiaojie Tan, Daoyou Feng, Soon Chung Park, and Paul Andre Michels.
Park said his mother was not only one of his best friends, but also “has the strongest influence on who we are today.”
“Her loss has put a new lens on my eyes for the amount of hatred that exists in our world. As much as I want to grieve and process that she’s gone, I have a younger brother to take care of and that’s important to me. Resolve because of this tragedy, ”he said. “… I will have to find out the living situation of my brother and I in the coming months, possibly a year.”
In an interview with the Associated Press, Park said his mother always found a way to enjoy life, even though she worked “ almost every day. ”
“She loved me and my brother enough to work for us, to dedicate her whole life,” he told the Associated Press. “That’s enough.”
Park said on GoFundMe that his number one priority is to rest his mother, but due to legal issues, he has not been able to obtain her body. He told the Associated Press that although his mother’s official last name was Grant, that name came from a marriage long ago, and now he is struggling to find paperwork proving that he is the real next of kin.
He said he needed to find out the details of this situation, he said, while he had two weeks to find a new, cheaper place for him and his brother.
Saturday afternoon, Park’s fundraiser was shared more than 64,000 times, with donations from more than 62,000 people.
“I don’t know how a word I write here will ever express how grateful and blessed I am to receive so much support,” he wrote as an update on the GoFundMe page. ‘… And to those of you who donated an amount. To put it bluntly, I can’t believe you exist. People I’ll probably never meet, hear or express my gratitude. ‘
Park said he had asked friends to help him write his original fundraiser description, but his thanks are “my words uncut and unedited.”
“I will live the rest of my days gratefully for what essentially gave my family a second chance,” he said. ‘I can’t help but feel selfish about all the attention this has gotten … This isn’t even a fragment of how I feel. My mother can rest easy knowing that I have the support of the world with me. ‘