A drunk Texas woman allegedly tried to drown a random three-year-old Palestinian girl in an apartment complex pool after spewing racist remarks, cops said.
Elizabeth Wolf, 42, was arrested and hit with a slew of charges, including attempted capital murder, following the violent incident at the pool in Euless, just outside Dallas, last month, KSAT reported.
Wolf, who witnesses described as being “very intoxicated”, is accused of approaching the girl’s hijab-wearing mother by the poolside and interrogating her about where she was originally from.
She then allegedly jumped into the shallow end of the pool where the little girl and her six-year-old brother were playing and tried to grab them both, police said.
The boy managed to break free but Wolf allegedly dragged the little girl to the deeper end and started dunking her head underwater.
The girl’s mom and another bystander quickly jumped into the pool and were able to rescue the sputtering girl, cops said.
Both kids were later cleared by medics at the scene.
“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, said in the aftermath.
“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, who was nabbed by cops as she tried to leave the scene, was bailed out of jail the day after the May 18 incident.
The Texas chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations have since called on state and federal authorities to probe the ordeal 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.”
