Texas woman charged after ‘attempting to drown’ Palestinian child

Woman is charged with attempted murder as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) urges US authorities to investigate incident as a ‘hate crime’.

A woman from Texas has been charged with attempted murder after she tried to drown a three-year-old Palestinian girl, according to United States media reports, citing local police.

The incident, which took place on May 19 in Euless, Texas, is being described by civil rights groups as racially motivated.

According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Texas), the accused, 42-year-old Elizabeth Wolf, attacked the girl at the swimming pool at her family’s apartment complex. The child’s mother and six-year-old brother were also present.

“Mrs. H, the mother, who wears hijab [Islamic headscarf] and modest swimwear, was watching her children in the shallow end of the pool when a white American woman entered the swimming pool area,” CAIR said in a press release on Friday.

“The alleged attacker reportedly approached the mother with racist interrogations then jumped into the swimming pool and grabbed the children to the deep end of the pool to allegedly drown them,” the civil rights group said, after which the mother jumped in to rescue her children, with Wolf responding by ripping off her headscarf.