The local police are treating this as an incident of workplace violence. That actually isn't unreasonable, since he had either just been fired, or was in the process of being fired, at the time of the attacks. However, the FBI has been called in to help investigate the case.

Vaughan Foods regularly hires people from prisons and halfway houses. That isn't a bad thing, and it usually works out well. This time, it obviously didn't.

I can think of very few cases where a black-on-white crime was treated as a hate crime, and none since Eric Holder became Attorney General.

Onward and upward,
airforce