A North Texas woman has been charged with attempted capital murder and injury to a child after she allegedly attempted to drown a three-year-old child in May.
Elizabeth Wolf, 42, was accused of attempting to drown the child, who is Muslim, on May 19 while in their apartment complex swimming pool in Euless.
According to a statement from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Wolf allegedly approached the child's mother — who was dressed in a hijab — with racist interrogations before jumping in the pool and leading the three-year-old and her six-year-old sibling to the deep end of the pool.
The six-year-old was able to escape but Wolf allegedly held the three-year-old underwater while attempting to keep the mother away.
Both children were medically cleared.
KERA News reached out to Wolf's attorney and will update this story with any comments.
According to court records, Wolf was booked into the Tarrant County Jail and later bailed out.
At a press conference on Saturday, Mustafaa Carroll, CAIR-DFW Executive Director, said the family was still reeling from the incident.
Reading from a statement from the children's mother, Carroll said, "My daughter is traumatized. Whenever I open the apartment door she runs away and hides, telling me that she's afraid the lady will come and immerse her head in the water again."
CAIR-Austin Operations Manager, Shaimaa Zayan, said: “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." pic.twitter.com/4ZQxxPiMyr
— CAIR National (@CAIRNational) June 22, 2024
CAIR has helped the family with counseling since the incident. Carroll said the family, who was not present at the press conference, is struggling and afraid to be seen in public.
Shaimaa Zayan, CAIR-Austin Operations Manager, said in a statement that she was "devastated" that Wolf was bailed out.
"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.
In January, CAIR released new civil rights data that indicated it had received 3,578 complaints during the last three months of 2023, a 178% increase over the previous year. This increase parallels with the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, which started in October 2023.
Rep. Salman Bhojani, who represents Euless, said in a statement that his office will monitor the situation as it develops.
“I’m shocked and appalled by this alleged racist, Islamophobic occurrence that took place in my town. Hate has no place in Euless, District 92, or anywhere in our great state," Bhojani said in the statement. "I want to thank Euless PD for quickly apprehending the alleged provocateur, and I extend my service to the affected family."
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