DALLAS — A Texas woman allegedly tried to drown a 3-year-old Palestinian American 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.

Elizabeth Wolf, 42, has been charged with attempted capital murder and injury to a child. The child’s mother told officers that Wolf told the mother she wasn’t American, along with other racial statements, police said.

The mother of the children, who wears a hijab, said in a news release from the Texas chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations that they are Palestinians who became American citizens. Neither police nor CAIR have released the mother’s name.

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.

The child’s mother told officers that Wolf had been asking her where she was from and if the two children playing in the pool were hers, police said. 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.

Community leaders, including Texas Rep. Salman Bhojani and Mustafaa Carole, a spokesperson for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), attend a news conference, Saturday, June 22. – Photo by AP

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.

Wolf has been released on bond. A call to her attorney was not immediately returned Monday.

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

Salman Bhojani, a Texas House of Representatives member from Euless, said he was left “appalled” by the incident.

“I’m shocked and appalled by this alleged racist, Islamophobic occurrence that took place in my town,” Bhojani said. “Hate has no place in Euless, District 92, or anywhere in our great state.”

The attack comes in the shadow of Israel’s war on Gaza, in which at least 37,598 Palestinians have been killed. The war began on October 7, following a Hamas-led attack on Israel, in which 1,139 people were killed, with dozens still held captive in Gaza.

In late November, three Palestinian men in their early 20s were shot near a university campus in Vermont, injuring all three of them.

One month earlier, police in Illinois charged a 71-year-old man with murder and a hate crime for stabbing a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy to death and seriously injuring his mother.

According to the police, he targeted the victims as a response to the war in Gaza and their religion.

In its press release, CAIR said it had received 3,578 complaints of bias and discrimination in the last three months of last year.

The Arab American Civil Rights League (ACRL) called on authorities to charge Wolf with a hate crime.

“The ACRL condemns this horrific act of violence and urges the authorities to classify it as a hate crime,” the ACRL stated in a press release. “The racist nature of the attack is evident, and such crimes against Arab Americans must be addressed with the utmost seriousness.”

“This attack is a blatant example of the hate and discrimination that many Arab Americans continue to face,” said Mariam Charara, executive director of the ACRL. “We demand that justice be served and that hate crime charges be pursued to send a clear message that such acts of hatred will not be tolerated.”

Biden “deeply disturbed” by the report

President 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.

“No child should ever be subjected to a violent attack, and my heart goes out to the family,” Biden wrote in the post.

– Wire services. Edited for style.