EULESS, Texas — A Texas woman allegedly tried to drown a 3-year-old at an apartment complex pool in suburban Dallas after making racist remarks toward the child's mother in a case investigators are asking to be treated as a hate crime, a police spokeswoman said Monday.

What You Need To Know

  • A Texas woman is accused of attempting to drown a 3-year-old Muslim child on May 19

  • According to the Euless Police Department, Elizabeth Wolf was arrested for public intoxication and charged with attempted capital murder and injury to a child

  • The Texas chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations identified the family as Muslim and Palestinian

  • Investigators are asking for the case to be treated as a hate crime, a police spokeswoman said Monday

According to a news release by Euless Police Department, which was obtained by CNN, on May 19, officers responded to a call about a disturbance between two women at the apartment complex.

Euless is located in Tarrant County, Texas, and is a suburb of Dallas and Fort Worth.

Witnesses told officers “a woman who was very intoxicated had tried to drown a child and argued with the child’s mother,” the news release states.

The woman, 42-year-old Elizabeth Wolf, was arrested for public intoxication and is charged with attempted capital murder and injury to a child after trying to drown a 3-year-old at an apartment complex pool, police said.

According to police, the victim’s mother said Wolf asked where she was from and if her children belonged to her. The mother told officers that after she answered, Wolf tried to grab the woman's 6-year-old son but he pulled away from her grasp, causing a scratch on his finger.

Police said that as the mother helped her son, Wolf grabbed the woman's 3-year-old daughter and forced her underwater. The mother pulled her daughter, who was yelling for help and coughing up water, out of the pool, police said.

Medics evaluated both children, who were cleared.

On Friday, the Texas chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR-Texas, identified the family as Muslim and Palestinian. They are calling for the incident to be investigated 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. “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.”

Euless police Capt. Brenda Alvarado told The Associated Press that the department has requested that prosecutors in Tarrant County treat the case as a hate crime. A spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office said Monday that they have received the case and are currently reviewing it.

On Monday, President Joe Biden issued a statement on the incident on X, formerly Twitter, saying he is “deeply disturbed.”

On Saturday, community leaders came together to denounce the attack on the child and how the woman treated the family.

“The trauma and pain this has caused for the immigrant community broadly and Muslim community more specifically cannot be understated,” said state Rep. Salman Bhojani, whose district includes part of Euless.

CNN confirmed with the Euless Police Department that Wolf posted bond. The bond for the attempted capital murder charge was $25,000 and the bond for injury to a child was $15,000, police said.