Father convicted in ‘honor killings’ of two teenage daughters in Texas
A Texas father was convicted of killing his two teenage daughters in a long-awaited trial on Tuesday.
Yaser Said, 65, fatally shot 18-year-old Amina Said and 17-year-old Sarah Said on Jan. 1, 2008. He then evaded arrest for 12 years before the feds caught up with him in Justin, Texas, in 2020.
Yaser Said is pictured in an undated photo from Irving police.
The case’s smoking gun was a 911 call by Sarah on the night of her death, in which she told the operator, “My dad shot me! I’m dying! I’m dying!”
Sarah was shot nine times; Amina was shot twice. Their mother, Patricia Owens, addressed Said and the entire courtroom after he was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
“You deserve a lot more than what the judge gave to you. You deserve to die,” Owens said, according to Dallas NBC affiliate KXAS. “At this time, you are nothing. You are a prisoner and a murderer and the devil.”
Less than two weeks before she was killed, Amina Said wrote an email to her high school history teacher describing her terror in the presence of her father.
“We’re not allowed to date and my dad is arranging my marriage. My dad said I cannot put it off any more and I have to get married this year,” she wrote. “He will, without any drama nor doubt, kill us.”
Both Amina and Sarah had boyfriends at the time. On Christmas Day 2007, the girls, their boyfriends and their mother fled their home in the Dallas suburb of Lewisville for Tulsa, Okla. But Said convinced them to return on New Year’s Eve.
Sarah Said, 17, and Amina Said, 18. (YouTube video tribute/)
The next day, he promised to take the girls to dinner, claiming he wanted to smooth things over and “solve the problem.” They were found dead in his taxi outside a hotel in the Dallas suburb of Irving.
When Said learned cops were looking for him, he went underground. In 2012, there was even speculation he made it to New York City and was driving an unlicensed cab. The FBI put him on its Most Wanted list and initially described the murders as “honor killings,” suggesting that Said killed his daughters for dating and bringing “dishonor” to the family.
A local detective asked the FBI to drop that description, according to the Dallas Morning News.
“There’s no such thing as an honor killing. You kill somebody, there is no honor to it. It’s a murder,” Irving cop Joe Hennig testified.
Said and his defense team tried to suggest that one of the girls’ boyfriends killed them, but the jury didn’t buy it. Prosecutor Brandi Mitchell called his theory “absurd.”
Yassim Said, Yaser’s brother, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for helping him hide from police. Islam Said, Yaser’s son, got 10 years for the same crime.
With News Wire Services
