Watch: Live video of Yaser Said murder trial; Texas father accused of killing teen daughters
The murder trial of Yaser Said continues this week in a Dallas courtroom.
The North Texas man is accused of fatally shooting his two teenage daughters, Amina and Sarah, on New Year’s Day 2008 in Irving.
Prosecutors say the father was possessive and controlling, and went on the run for 12 years after the killings until investigators tracked him down. The defense contends the investigation was botched.
On Wednesday, jurors heard a 911 call in which Sarah said her father shot her and she was dying.
“Help! My dad shot me,” Sarah said in the recording. “I’m dying. I’m dying.”
The call lasted about four and a half minutes, during which crying and moaning could be heard, followed by silence. Sarah was unable to tell the 911 dispatcher where she was.
Watch the trial live here:
Authorities have said Sarah was shot nine times, and Amina was shot twice.
Other witnesses Wednesday included police investigators and the victims’ boyfriends.
Some family members have said that the girls were victims of “honor killings” because their father thought they had brought shame to the family and he was unhappy about who they were dating.
In an email to her Lewisville High School history teacher a few days before she and her sister were killed, Amina said that she and Sarah did not want to live by their Egyptian-born father’s culture and marry men from the Middle East, “especially men we don’t know or love.” So they were running away from their father’s home, she said in the email prosecutors read into evidence.
“I know that he will search until he finds us, and he will without any drama nor doubt kill us,” the email read.
The prosecution told the jury on Tuesday that the girls escaped the family’s home with their mother on Christmas Day in 2007 and went to Oklahoma because they were afraid of their father.
The sisters had become “very scared for their lives,” and the decision to leave was made after Yaser Said “put a gun to Amina’s head and threatened to kill her,” prosecutor Lauren Black said.
But in an act of manipulation, claiming he had changed and wanted to take his daughters out to dinner, “He got them to come home,” Black told jurors in her opening statement. “On the night they are killed, Amina is sitting on the front-seat passenger side and Sarah was in a back seat. Yaser Said’s wife wanted to go with them, but he told her to stay home.”
Yaser Said has sent several letters to the judge, proclaiming his innocence, according to WFAA-TV.
In one letter he wrote, “I was not happy about my kids’ dating activity. But, I did not do the killings or any plan to hurt them,” WFAA reported.
If convicted, Yaser Said faces life in prison without parole.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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