EULESS, Texas — Months after an alleged hate crime at an apartment complex pool in Euless, a Palestinian-Muslim mother who says another woman tried to drown her three-year-old daughter spoke to WFAA in an exclusive interview.
The Euless mom, who asked not to be named or shown out of fear for her family’s safety, said her children are still traumatized from the alleged incident.
“I’m sometimes scared of the outside with my kids because I’ve got my hijab,” she said.
On Tuesday, she said she was relieved to learn the suspect, 42-year-old Elizabeth Wolf, was indicted.
“After this, I feel safety… more feeling of safety with my family is good,” the mother said. “I think she needs to stay in jail.”
Wolf was indicted on the charges of attempted capital murder of a person under 10 and injury to a child. The indictment includes a hate crime enhancement for the charge of injury to a child. The enhancement could increase the severity of Wolf's sentence if she is found guilty.
According to the Euless Police Department, the alleged incident occurred May 19, 2024, when officers responded to an Euless apartment pool in response to a reported disturbance between two women.
“The lady came to me and asked me why you speak a different language with your kids. I told her because this is my original language. She came back and said, ‘Why did you come to this country, you a citizen?’ I told her ‘Yes. I’m a citizen.’ She told me ‘No, you liar. You’re not a citizen, you’re a terrorist,’” the mother recounted during an interview with WFAA.
According to court documents, witnesses told police that a woman attempted to drown a child in the apartment's pool. The Palestinian mother of the child stated that Wolf tried to grab her six-year-old son, then grabbed the mother's three-year-old daughter and started to force her underwater, police said.
Police said the mother called witnesses for help as she struggled to save her daughter on her own.
“She hold my daughter and tried to kill my daughter in the water,” the mother said. “I tried to save my daughter. I told her, ‘Please, don’t kill my kid. Don’t kill my daughter.’ She’s not listening, she’s just smiling.”
Wolf currently remains in jail on a $1 million bond. She was initially arrested on a public intoxication charge and released on a $40,000 bond before the charges were elevated, and she was re-arrested in July.
WFAA has reached out to Wolf's attorney but did not hear back.
The young children are still suffering from trauma and have received help from a therapist since the incident occurred, the mother said. In the aftermath of the alleged attempted drowning, her daughter was afraid of taking showers. She hid at the sound of someone knocking on their front door, had nightmares, struggled to sleep, and stopped eating.
The mother said during the alleged hate crime, her six-year-old son heard a word he had never heard before: terrorist.
“They ask me, ‘What does it mean, a terrorist? Because this is the first time he heard. It’s sad,” the mother said. “Arabic people, Muslim people are not terrorists. We are friendly, good people.”
The mother said the family left their home country of Palestine to seek safety in the U.S. Now she’s too afraid to leave her home by herself.
“We don’t feel safe back home, we don’t feel safe here,” she said. All I want is really peace because seeing my child almost getting killed... it is so hard. Imagine what this does to a child in the long term. Why do that for my daughter? She’s just a small girl. She’s not a terrorist. Sometimes I ask myself, why? I don’t have answers for this happen.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations welcomed the indictment in a statement Tuesday.
"Any crime against a child must be treated with the utmost seriousness and prosecuted to the full extent of the law," Mustafaa Carroll, CAIR-Dallas Fort Worth Executive Director, said in a release. "We stand in solidarity with the family and pray that God grants them solace and justice.”
A GoFundMe was started to support the family.