ATLANTA — The Georgia official who sparked outrage after telling reporters the Atlanta spa shooting suspect was having a "bad day" is now also drawing scrutiny for Facebook posts that promoted a T-shirt with racist language about China and COVID-19, CBS News reported.
"He was pretty much fed up and kind of at the end of his rope. Yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did," Cherokee County Sheriff's Office Director of Communications Jay Baker said during a news conference last week.
Note: the video in this story is from a March 18 broadcast, "Sheriff's office responds to backlash from spokesman's comments at news conference about spa shootings"
Baker was talking about the accusations against 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long, who is in custody for what officials said were shootings that “did not appear” to be racially motivated but were instead because of the suspect’s sex addiction issues.
Just hours after the briefing and “bad days” comments, internet sleuths “uncovered Baker's apparent Facebook posts from April 2020, which appear to show him purchasing and promoting a t-shirt that called COVID-19 an IMPORTED VIRUS FROM CHY-NA,” CBS reported.
The Associated Press reported the account for "Jay Baker," which was deleted Wednesday night, featured several photos of Cherokee County sheriff's Captain Jay Baker going back months — but not before some people had already saved multiple screenshots.
Baker and the sheriff's office did not immediately respond to CBS News' request for comment.