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They say he yelled ‘I hate Mexicans’ before attacking them with a metal bar. Will this Utah case be considered a hate crime?

Jose Lopez was in the office of his tire shop warming up some chicken soup that his wife had made him when he heard his son screaming from the garage.

The store on Main near 1600 South had been open for only an hour, and there were no customers yet. Luis Gustavo Lopez, 18, had been tinkering around on a couple of projects while they waited. Jose, 51, had gone in to get warm and eat breakfast.

Microwave ajar, he set down the plastic bowl and ran to the front door.

A man was standing in the courtyard of the Salt Lake City mechanic shop with a metal bar in his hand that looked like it had been plied off a stop sign.