Police ask Texas prosecutors to treat attempted drowning of 3-year-old child as a hate crime
DALLAS– A Texas woman allegedly tried to drown a three-year-old child in the swimming pool of a suburban Dallas apartment complex after making racist comments to the child’s mother in a case that investigators are calling for to be treated as a hate crime. a police spokeswoman said Monday.
Elizabeth Wolf, 42, has been charged with attempted murder and injury to a child. The child’s mother told officers that Wolf told the mother she was not American, along with other racist statements, police said.
The children’s mother, who wears a hijab, said in a news release from the Texas chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations that they are Palestinians who have become U.S. citizens. Neither police nor CAIR have released the mother’s name.
Euless Police Capt. Brenda Alvarado told The Associated Press that the department has requested that Tarrant County prosecutors treat the case as a hate crime. A spokeswoman for the Public Prosecution Service said on Monday that they have received the case and are currently assessing it.
Police said in a statement that when officers arrived for a call about a disturbance between two women on May 19 in Euless, witnesses told officers that a “very intoxicated” Wolf had tried to drown a child and had gotten into an argument with the mother of the child.
The child’s mother told officers that Wolf asked her where she was from and if the two children playing in the pool were hers, police said. The mother told officers that after she responded, Wolf tried to grab the woman’s 6-year-old son, but he broke free from her grasp, causing a scratch on his finger.
Police said that while the mother was helping her son, Wolf grabbed the woman’s 3-year-old daughter and forced her underwater. The mother pulled her daughter, who was screaming for help and coughing up water, from the pool, police said.
Doctors examined both children, who were cleared.
Wolf has been released on bail. A call to her attorney was not immediately returned Monday.
On Saturday, community leaders gathered to denounce the attack on the child and the woman’s treatment of the family.
“The trauma and pain this has caused for the immigrant community in general and for the Muslim community in particular cannot be underestimated,” said state Rep. Salman Bhojani, whose district includes part of Euless.