Texas woman accused of trying to drown 3-year-old Palestinian-American girl in swimming pool
A woman in Euless, Texas has been charged with attempted capital murder and injury to a child after trying to drown another woman’s three-year-old child at an apartment complex pool, according to reports.
The Texas chapter of a Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, CAIR, is calling on state and federal law enforcement authorities to investigate a possible “hate crime” after a woman committed a “bias-motivated murder attempt targeting Muslim children” in Euless, Texas, a June 21 press release stated.
The shocking incident occurred on May 19, when Euless Police officers responded to a call about a disturbance between two women at an apartment complex pool off at around 5.45pm.
The woman, later identified as Elizabeth Wolf, 42, “who was very intoxicated had tried to drown a child and argued with the child’s mother,” witnesses said, according to a press release obtained by CNN.
Wolf was reportedly pressing the actual mother — who was wearing a hijab and “modest swimwear” — of the children where she was from and if the children in the pool were hers, CAIR said. She also made statements about the mother not being an American in addition to other racist remarks, CNN reported.
Wolf then attempted to grab the woman’s six-year-old son, who pulled away and was scratched in the encounter, the mother told police. That’s when Wolf allegedly grabbed her three-year-old daughter and “forced her underwater,” the outlet reported.
The little girl “had been yelling for help and was coughing up water” and the mother was eventually able to save her. The mother said a man helped rescue her daughter from Wolf, CAIR wrote.
Authorities placed Wolf under arrest for public intoxication. As she was being escorted away in handcuffs, according to CAIR, Wolf allegedly yelled to a witness who was helping calm down the nervous mother: “Tell her I will kill her, and I will kill her whole family.”
The mother, referred to as “Mrs H,” told CAIR that she and her children are American citizens who are originally from Palestine: “I don’t know where to go to feel safe with my kids. My country is facing a war, and we are facing that hate here.”
She continued: “My daughter is traumatized; whenever I open the apartment door, she runs away and hides, telling me she is afraid the lady will come and immerse her head in the water again.”
Wolf was later charged with attempted capital murder and injury to a child, NBC DFW reported. The Independent has reached out to the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office for more information.
Shaimaa Zayan, CAIR-Austin Operations Manager, said in a statement that she was “devastated” after hearing that Wolf had been bonded out of jail the day after she was arrested.
“We ask for hate-crime probe, a higher bail bond, and an open conversation with officials to address this alarming increase in Islamophobia, anti-Arab, and anti-Palestinian sentiment,” she said.
A GoFundMe page was created to support the family in the aftermath of the incident.
“This incident impacted the family’s financial stability as the father had to take time away from work to accompany his wife and their four children to appointments and errands. In this heavy time, your support can bring back the hope and the trust to this devastated family,” the fundraiser says. It raised more than $16,000.
