A woman in Texas has been charged with attempted capital murder and injury to a child after trying to drown a 3-year-old child at an apartment complex pool and making racist statements, according to police.
The mother, going only by Mrs. H., was sitting by the pool watching her 2 children play in the shallow end of the pool. Mrs. H was wearing a hijab and a modest swimsuit when the interaction occurred.
A woman approached Mrs. H. making racist comments, asking about her ethnicity, and asking about the language she was speaking with her children. Mrs. H said she told her that she was Palestinian-American.
At that point, the woman making the racist comments jumped into the pool and started dragging the two children into the deep end. The son, 6-years-old, was able to pull away from her grasp, resulting in a scratch on his finger. The woman continued on with the the daughter and began holding her head underwater.
Their mother tried to stop her, but her hijab was ripped off and the woman hit her with it, then kicked her away. She then continued to hold the 3-year-old girl’s head under water in an attempt to drown her until a man nearby jumped into the pool and rescued the child.
The woman, identified as Elizabeth Wolf, 42, was approached by officers as she tried to leave and placed under arrest for public intoxication. Her charges were later updated to include attempted capital murder and injury to a child. She was released on a $40,000 bond.
“We are American citizens, originally from Palestine, and I don’t know where to go to feel safe with my kids,” the council quoted the mother as saying. “My country is facing a war, and we are facing that hate here. 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.”
The Texas chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations identified the family as Muslim and Palestinian and called on state and federal law enforcement authorities to investigate the incident “as a hate crime and take all precautions to keep the Muslim family and the Muslim community safe,” the organization said in a news release Friday.
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