Police say Elizabeth Wolf made racist comments before pulling a Palestinian American 3-year-old underwater at a local pool.
In May, a Palestinian American mother and her two children were enjoying a Sunday afternoon at their apartment complex’s swimming pool in Texas when police say a woman attempted to drown one of the children. The woman, 42-year-old Elizabeth Wolf, was initially arrested for public intoxication and has since been charged with attempted capital murder and injury to a child. Now, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is calling for the incident — the latest in a slew of Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian attacks Stateside — to be investigated as a hate crime. Here’s what we know.
Wolf has been accused of making racist comments before attempting to pull the children underwater.
On May 19, a woman identified by CAIR as Mrs. H was at her apartment complex’s pool in Euless, Texas, watching over her son, 6, and her daughter, 3, as they played in the shallow end of the pool. According to CAIR’s press release, Wolf, a white woman, approached Mrs. H, who was wearing a hijab and modest swimwear. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports that Wolf was visibly intoxicated and made racist comments toward Mrs. H, allegedly asking where she was from and whether the children in the pool were hers. Then, police say Wolf jumped into the pool and started to pull the children toward the deep end.
Mrs. H told authorities she jumped in the pool to save her children. According to the police report, her 6-year-old son was able to get out of Wolf’s grasp, but Wolf then grabbed the 3-year-old and forced her under the water. According to CAIR, Wolf ripped off Mrs. H’s hijab, using it to beat her and also kicking her to keep her from getting to her daughter.
Emma Aziz, a neighbor who witnessed the incident, told FOX 4 News that she yelled to a man at the pool to help save the girl, while another person called 911. “I was shaking,” said Aziz. “Everybody was really, really terrified.” Though the girl was eventually rescued, police say she “had been yelling for help and was coughing up water.” Following the incident, both children were medically cleared by Euless medics, according to police.
Police initially arrested Wolf for public intoxication. According to CAIR, as she was being handcuffed, she yelled to a witness who was calming Mrs. H, “Tell her I will kill her, and I will kill her whole family.” According to CAIR operations manager Shaimaa Zayan, Wolf bailed herself out of jail the next day.
On May 23, Tarrant County prosecutors filed charges against Fox for attempted capital murder and injury to a child. “The bond for the attempted capital murder charge was $25,000. The bond for the injury to a child charge was $15,000,” Captain Brenda Alvarado told CNN.
CAIR is calling for the incident to be investigated as a hate crime.
After releasing a statement and circulating a GoFundMe page to benefit the family of the victims, CAIR held a press conference this weekend calling for the incident to be investigated as a hate crime. “I’m shocked and appalled by this alleged racist, Islamophobic occurrence,” Texas state congressman Salman Bhojani said during the conference. “Hate has no place in Euless, District 92, or anywhere in our great state,” he said, adding: “The trauma and pain this has caused for the immigrant community broadly and Muslim community more specifically cannot be understated.” Bhojani said that his office would continue to monitor the ongoing investigation.
“It is believed to be an offense that was committed because of bias or prejudice and that is part of the case and it has been filed with the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office,” the Euless Police Department told FOX 4 news in a statement.
The alleged attack comes after CAIR reported receiving 8,061 complaints related to anti-Muslim incidents in 2023 — the highest recorded number of complaints in the organization’s 30-year history. That number also includes several instances of violence against children, including the murder of 6-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume in Chicago. Meanwhile, a new report from Save the Children estimates that 20,000 children in Gaza are “trapped beneath rubble, detained, buried in unmarked graves, or lost from their families.”
During the press conference, Mustafaa Carroll, executive director of the Dallas–Fort Worth chapter of CAIR Texas, read a statement from Mrs. H. “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. My daughter is traumatized,” she wrote.
Taha Taha, an attorney working on the case, told the Star-Telegram, “Every person has the right to feel safe and protected in their community. Our politicians and leaders must be careful when they address the media about foreign affairs to prevent acts of hatred that can only be attributed to Islamophobia and ignorance.”
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