ATLANTA — On her 50th birthday, Xiaojie Tan would have gathered with her only child for a slice of strawberry fresh cream cake, her favorite.
The mother and daughter were best friends.
But the day before Tan would have celebrated her many accomplishments- making a life in the United States, building a family, launching two businesses- a gunman broke into her business and opened fire, killing her and three others in a shooting rampage. He went on to kill another four people at two other spas.
Instead, Jami Webb, 29, and her father, Michael Webb, 64, spent Tan’s birthday planning her funeral at a Catholic church.
“She did everything for me and for the family. She provided everything. She worked every day, 12 hours a day, so that me and our family would have a better life,” Jami Webb said of her mother.
Like Tan, most of the victims of the shooting attacks were of Asian descent, drawing new attention to an ongoing wave of hate crimes against Asian Americans across the country fueled by racism and xenophobia amid the COVID-19 outbreak and anti-China rhetoric expressed by many conservative leaders, including former President Donald Trump.
