FORT WORTH, Texas — Amina Said and her sister, Sarah, were girls with big dreams.
A prosecutor on Tuesday described the teens as bright young girls who as students at Lewisville High School wanted to be doctors, attend college, marry and have a family.
But their father, Yaser Said, was a man who possessed them, controlled them and finally killed them in 2008, said prosecutor Lauren Black in the opening statements of Yaser Said’s capital murder trial in Dallas.
“He got extremely dangerous,” Black told the Dallas County jury Tuesday. The other prosecutors in the case are Brandi Mitchell, Jaclyn O’Connor and Summer Elmazi.
“Where was he when the girls were killed?” Black asked, telling the jury that Said became a fugitive after their deaths. “He was nowhere to be found. Twelve years later and the man was finally found.”
On Tuesday in Criminal District Court No. 7 in Dallas, Said, 65, pleaded not guilty in the shooting deaths of Amina, 18, and Sarah Said, 17, in 2008 near an Irving hotel.
Yaser Said’s defense attorney, Joseph Patton, told jurors that Said was a suspect because he is Muslim, and that evidence would indicate the investigation was botched. The defense raised questions about several of the 58 witnesses on call by prosecutors.
The prosecution contends that Yaser Said killed his daughters in his taxi on Jan. 1, 2008, allegedly because he was upset they were dating American boys.
Amina Said was shot twice, while nine shots were fired at Sarah Said.
Hours before the bodies of the teens were found, Yaser Said had picked up his daughters and never returned home, according to the capital murder warrant obtained by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
The prosecutor told the jury Tuesday that the girls escaped the family’s home on Christmas Day in 2007 because they were afraid of their father.
“He got them to come home,” Black told jurors Tuesday. “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.”
Some family members said that the girls were victims of “honor killings” because their father thought they had brought shame to the family.
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.
Prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty. If convicted, Said will be automatically sentenced to life without parole.
For several years after the killings, authorities said that Said was a fugitive who was on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list, but he was arrested in August 2020 in Justin, just north of Fort Worth.
Since his arrest, Said has been in the Dallas County Jail.
Two of Said’s family members have been sentenced for hiding him in North Texas for years.
His son Islam Said, 32, pleaded guilty in January 2021 to conspiracy to conceal a person from arrest, concealing a person from arrest and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding.. He was later sentenced to 10 years in federal prison.
Yaser Said’s brother Yassein Said was sentenced in 2021 to 12 years for conspiracy to conceal a person from arrest, concealing a person from arrest and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding.
Throughout the investigation, federal agents and Irving police believed other members of Yaser Said’s family had assisted and communicated with him.
Patricia Owens, who is Yaser Said’s former wife and the mother of the girls, told federal authorities that members of his family had indicated to her “little remorse for the victims,” and indicated support for their killer, according to a federal criminal complaint.
On the night of Jan. 1, 2008, Irving police found Amina Said hunched over in the passenger seat of her father’s taxi. Her sister, Sarah, was found in the back seat. Both had been shot multiple times near the Omi Mandalay Hotel in Irving.
Before she died, Sarah Said called 911. She was unable to say where she was.
“Help!” she said. “My dad shot me.”
The criminal complaints against Yassein Said and Islam Said do not indicate where Yaser Said was from January 2008 until August 2017.
Nine years after the killings, investigators got a break when a maintenance worker at the Copper Canyon Apartments in Bedford spotted Yaser Said in an apartment rented by Islam Said, federal agents said.
FBI agents had told apartment officials before that encounter that Islam Said was renting an apartment there and that he was the son of a wanted fugitive.
After the sighting, on Aug. 14, 2017, an FBI agent tried to interview Islam Said, wanting to ask him who was inside the Bedford apartment and get consent to search it. Islam Said refused to cooperate and called his attorney. Later, authorities discovered that Islam Said called someone and told them, “we have a big problem,” according to the complaint.
Authorities obtained a search warrant for the apartment and executed it on Aug. 15, 2017 , but they didn’t find anyone. Investigators collected a Pall Mall cigarette butt from a trash can, a pair of eyeglasses, and a toothbrush found in a luggage bag inside a closet.
A few days after the Bedford apartment was searched, Yassein Said and another man showed up at the leasing office, demanding to know who saw someone in Islam Said’s apartment, according to the complaint.
Months later, test results on DNA collected from the apartment indicated that Yaser Said had been there.
Years passed before federal authorities got another break.
On Aug. 10, 2020, authorities discovered that two homes were in the name of Dalal Said, one of Yassein Said’s daughters. One home was in Justin and the other in Euless. Authorities already knew that the Euless residence was the primary home of Islam Said.
Federal authorities began surveillance at both homes.
FBI agents saw Islam Said and Yassein Said carry about five grocery bags into the Justin home.
From Aug. 17-19, 2020, FBI agents were conducting 24-hour surveillance at the home.
Yassein Said and Islam Said arrived and carried in more grocery bags. Islam Said was seen exiting the Justin home with two small grocery bags possibly containing trash. He placed the bags in a vehicle. Yassein also walked out of the residence and the two got into the vehicle.
In early August 2020, trash bags had been left on the curb near the Justin home. The two Said men drove to a Southlake shopping center and dropped the two bags in a garbage can.
The trash bags, which included numerous cigarette butts, were seized by FBI agents.
On Aug. 19, 2020, authorities armed with a search warrant found Yaser Said in the Justin home. He was arrested without incident.
Federal authorities discovered a hidden room with a cot in it in the back of the residence.
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