Elizabeth Wolf was charged with 'attempted murder' for allegedly trying to strangle her 3-year-old child to death after a fight with his Palestinian mother. The attempted murder was allegedly racially motivated.
According to Sky News, an eyewitness said Wolf was 'very drunk' at the time of the incident. Based on the eyewitness account, police said she tried to drown the girl in the swimming pool after a fight with her Palestinian mother. Wolf, 42, was first arrested in May for alleged 'public drunkenness' at the pool of a complex in Euless, Texas. Following the police investigation, she was also charged with attempted murder and injury to a child.
"INVESTIGATE AS A HATE CRIME"
The Texas chapter of the civil rights organization Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Texas) claimed that Wolf 'interrogated' the child's mother. The organization said the mother was wearing a headscarf and speaking to her children in a foreign language when Wolf approached them. Police reported that after questioning the woman, Wolf tried to grab her 6-year-old son, who managed to escape but cut his finger in the process.
While the Palestinian woman helped her son, Wolf allegedly grabbed the woman's 3-year-old daughter and tried to force her under the water. CAIR-Texas noted that the mother was able to rescue her daughter with the help of a nearby bystander, after which emergency services arrived on the scene. The organization called for the incident to be investigated as a hate crime.
"FEAR"
According to CAIR-Texas, the girl's mother said, "We are American citizens, originally from Palestine, and I don't know where to go to make my children feel safe. There is war in my country, and we are facing hatred here."
"Whenever I open the apartment door, she runs and hides, telling me that she is afraid that the woman will come and put her head in the water again," the mother said, explaining that her daughter is traumatized.
"HATRED HAS NO PLACE HERE"
Salman Bhojani, a member of the Texas House of Representatives from the Democratic Party, said in a statement, "I am shocked and appalled by this allegedly racially and Islamophobically motivated incident in my town. Hate has no place in Euless 92nd District or anywhere else in our great state."
