Amina and Sarah Said's killer dad Yaser to spend life in prison for killing daughters in decade-old case
DALLAS, TEXAS: Once on the FBI’s Most Wanted List, Yaser Said has finally been found guilty of killing his two daughters — Amina and Sarah. Reports said that the 65-year-old fatally shot the victims in 2008 before he vanished. However in August 2020, he was arrested in Justin, Texas, before being brought to trial. Since death penalty was not pursued by the prosecutors, he will reportedly get life imprisonment.
During the trial, a New Year’s Day 911 call was played in the court in which Sarah’s last terrifying screams could be heard. "Help! My dad shot me," the 17-year-old had said in what would be the last moments of her and her 18-year-old sister Amina’s lives, prosecutors in the Dallas County courtroom claimed. She also yelled, "I’m dying, I’m dying," according to the 911 call.
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It has been said that Said wanted to control everything. When he found out that his children were dating Americans, he couldn’t tolerate it and killed them, deeming them “honor killings”. He did not plead guilty to the double murder and his defense attorney Joel Patton tried to bring the religion angle in the opening arguments. Patton had said, “It is wrong for the government to generalize an entire culture, criminalize an entire culture, to fit their narrative, and to fit their objective. The state wants to convict Yaser for being Muslim in 2008.”
But prosecutor Lauren Black refuted such claims and said, “This is a case about a man obsessed with possession and control. He controlled what they did, who they talked to, who they could be friends with, if they - and how they - could date. And he controlled everything in his household.” She also noted, “You’ll hear in this case that leading up to the murders of Amina Said and Sarah Said, the defendant’s behavior got extremely dangerous.”
Sarah’s then-boyfriend, Erik Panameno, also testified before the jurors that he did reveal his relationship at the time because “something bad [would] happen to me or something bad would happen to her” if Yaser got to know about it. Earlier, it was reported that the Said’s daughters had escaped with their mother, Patricia Owens, two weeks before the tragedy, only to be emotionally manipulated later. Sarah had even emailed her history teacher, Renee Hopkins, on December 21, 2007, saying as reported by The Sun, "He will, without any drama or doubt, kill us. He has simply made our lives a nightmare. He’s one man, not God."
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After the trio moved to Oklahoma to be with Patricia’s family, Said filed a missing persons report with the Lewisville Police Department, which forced the girls’ mother to inform the cops that they were not missing, only terrified of the man. Then, Amina and Sarah had to come back to Dallas on New Year’s Eve after Patricia, as reportedly told by her husband, said to them that their father wasn’t controlling anymore. Amina’s then-boyfriend, Edgar Ruiz, told the jury members that he met her before she went to Dallas. “She knew she was going to die,” he said.