Texas woman accused of trying to drown Palestinian girl, 3, in pool after making racist comments
Elizabeth Wolf, 42, has been accused of trying to drown a random Palestinian girl in an apartment complex pool in Texas.
A Texas woman has been accused of trying to drown a random Palestinian girl in an apartment complex pool. 42-year-old Elizabeth Wolf was drunk at the time of committing the alleged crime. She allegedly spewed racist remarks before trying to drown the three-year-old child.
Wolf has now been arrested and hit with several charges, including attempted capital murder. The incident took place on May 8 at the pool in Euless, just outside Dallas, KSAT reported.
The incident
Witnesses claimed that Wolf was “very intoxicated” at the time of the incident. She allegedly approached the girl’s mother, who was wearing a hijab, by the poolside. She began asking the mom where she was originally from.
Suddenly, Wolf jumped into the shallow end of the pool where the girl and her brother, 6, were playing. She tried to grab both the children, but the boy broke free. Wolf then dragged the girl to the pool’s deeper end and began pushing her head under the water.
The girl’s mother, along with another bystander, jumped into the pool and managed to rescue the girl. The children were soon cleared by medics.
“We are American citizens, originally from Palestine, and 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,” the mom, identified only as Mrs H, later said, according to New York Post.
“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,” she added.
Wolf was nabbed by police as she tried to flee. Shortly after, she was bailed out of jail.
The Texas chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations have urged the state and federal authorities to investigate the incident as a hate crime. “We are seeing a new level of bigotry here where a person deeply believes they get to decide, based on religion, spoken language, and country of origin, whose kids deserve to stay alive and whose don’t,” CAIR-Austin Operations Manager, Shaimaa Zayan, said in a statement.
“I was devastated to know that the attacker got a bail bond out of jail the next day after the arrest. 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,” Zayan added.