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 woman in Euless 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.
His statement joins those of local leaders, including District 92 State Rep. Salman Bhojani of Euless, who denounced what authorities 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 the woman 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.
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 police. A man jumped into the water and helped rescue the girl from Wolf, according to CAIR.
The woman was approached by Euless police officers as she tried to leave and placed under arrest for public intoxication.
As Wolf was being handcuffed by police she shouted, “I will kill her, and I will kill her whole family,” according to a news release.
