Biden ‘deeply disturbed’ by reports of attempted drowning of 3-year-old in Euless pool
President Joe Biden said he is “deeply disturbed by the reports of an attempted drowning of a 3-year-old Palestinian-American at a neighborhood pool” in Euless, according to a social media post on Monday.
A North Texas woman is charged with attempted capital murder after police said she tried to drown a 3-year-old girl at an apartment pool on May 19. Police said the woman, who witnesses said was intoxicated, made racist comments before trying to drown the girl.
“No child should ever be subjected to a violent attack, and my heart goes out to the family,” Biden wrote in the post.
Euless police have asked the Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office to prosecute the case as a hate crime. The DA’s Office is reviewing the case. The Council on American-Islamic Relations has also called for federal law enforcement to investigate.
“We welcome the request that local prosecutors treat this alleged murder attempt targeting a Muslim child as a hate crime,” CAIR said in a statement Tuesday. “Federal officials should take a similar action to show that allegedly bias-motivated violence targeting minority communities will never be tolerated or excused.”
CAIR says the organization received over 3,500 complaints of incidents related to anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian hate in the last three months of 2023.
The president’s statement joins those of local leaders, including District 92 Rep. Salman Bhojani of Euless, who denounced what officials have described as a hate-motivated attempted murder of two children.
Bhojani said Texans cannot tolerate hate or let crimes motivated by it “become the norm.”
“The trauma and pain this has caused for the immigrant community broadly and Muslim community more specifically cannot be understated,” Bhojani said at a news conference Saturday.
The children were in the shallow end of the swimming pool at the apartment, watched by their mother, on May 19 when a woman, identified as Elizabeth Wolf, 42, approached and asked the mother where she was from, according to police and witnesses. The mother was wearing a hijab and speaking Arabic to her children.
The mother said in a news release from the Council on American-Islamic Relations that Wolf jumped into the pool and pulled the children to the deep end, where she attempted to drown them.
Police said in a news release that Wolf attempted to grab the 6-year-old boy but he managed to get away. The mother went to help her son, but Wolf grabbed the 3-year-old girl and forced her under the water, authorities said.
Wolf is accused of kicking at the mother as she tried to get to her daughter and pulling off her hijab, hitting her with it, according to CAIR. A man jumped into the water and helped rescue the girl from Wolf.
The woman was approached by Euless police officers as she tried to leave and placed under arrest, initially for public intoxication.
As Wolf was being handcuffed by police she shouted, “I will kill her, and I will kill her whole family,” a witness told CAIR.
It’s unclear whether Wolf was staying at the apartment complex. Her address is listed in Grand Prairie, according to court records.
This story was originally published June 24, 2024 at 8:49 PM.