It did happen after bar closing time. After two A.M. So yeah, a sleep deprived drunk redneck and/or Teahadi type perpetrator. But even in the deepest, coldest Northern Midwest, there are tons of Hispanic American citizens and immigrants. He could not live there and not know what Spanish sounds like. You just cannot confuse Spanish with Hebrew, unless you are drunk as hell, like black-out level drunk. It's the Midwest. There is work there, there are jobs there, so duh, there are Latinos there. Don't bother arguing cultural work ethic intensity of the Latino community Versus the Anglo community with these assholes, because they unconsciously know they pale by comparison to Latinos on actual freaking work tolerance and ambition, so HATRED...(impotent jealousy).
This dude was just a potential murderer-ish personage looking for victims while drunk, most likely. No matter his idiocy in miss-identifying the ethnicity of the victims and the language spoken, it was a hate crime of the purest form. Hatred of not-just-like-me. Beat/injure/kill the not-like-me's. Cave man level stupidity. Too bad this fuckwit has probably already reproduced.