OKC Asian Community Leader Reacts To Deadly Atlanta-Area Mass Shooting

The impact of Tuesday night's deadly shootings in Atlanta is being felt throughout the country.

In Oklahoma City, Thuan Nguyen of the Asian District Cultural Association hopes lessons can be learned from the tragedy.

"As a community and Asian communities all around the country, I am really, truly saddened and sorry that it happened," said Nguyen, the chair of the Asian District Cultural Association. 

While the victims in Atlanta will never be forgotten, Nguyen hopes more awareness will come about the violence and discrimination Asian communities have faced since the start of the pandemic.

"This has to come to the forefront for us to acknowledge that these things are happening and that in turn, in a way, is going to be able to allow us to move forward and find solutions," he said.

Nguyen is hoping some of those solutions will come from Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt's newly created Human Rights Commission Task Force. Nguyen is a member.

"I'm hoping that as a leader in the Asian community, that I can be a voice for that and we can have our voice in our city," he said.

A new study finds hate crimes against Asian Americans were up 149% in 16 major U.S. cities in 2020.

Nguyen is happy to see Congress take notice of the problem with Thursday's hearing, but saddened it took people dying to make it happen.

"It takes that incident for them to kind of open their eyes and realize, 'hey, this is escalating, and it's something that probably, if we don't do anything to stop it, that's it's going to occur in many, many different cities,'" he said.