Yaser Said: Accused in ‘honor killing’ tells court that he thought his daughters sent 'someone' to ASSASSINATE him
DALLAS, TEXAS: During the capital murder trial, the Texas father accused of killing his two teenage daughters, Sarah, 17, and Amina, 18 in 2008, allegedly because they were dating American boys testified on Monday, August 8. He told the court that he fled the taxi the night they were killed because he thought his daughters had sent someone to assassinate him, and he was scared.
Yaser Said took the stand in his own defense on Monday afternoon. He testified that his daughters were alive in his cab the last time he saw them. Said, 65 was on the run for more than 10 years and is on the FBI's most wanted list. The jury said that he would receive a life sentence without the possibility of parole if proven guilty. Yaser told the court: "I stopped at Riverside Drive. I opened the door and ran across to a wooden area," he testified. "And I thought if it’s my daughters’ friend, let them solve the problem together if they have issues." According to FOX 4 Dallas: "Said claimed when he left the daughters in the cab, they were alive. He testified he had no further plan and had hoped a friend might drive by and pick him up."
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In court, witnesses and former investigators said that during his time on the run, Said went to great lengths to disguise himself, including enlisting the aid of his son and brother and sleeping in a secret chamber at the back of a garage that had been transformed into a living space. Said, who is the sole witness for his defense team spoke through a translator in Arabic and described his plans to take his daughters out to dinner the evening of the New Year's Day killings to "solve the problem" of their decision to leave home before graduating high school. However, he said in court that as soon as he got on the highway, he "felt like someone was following me." He claimed he suspected one or more vehicles were following the taxi he and his two children were driving.
Said testified to the jury that he was terrified and urged his girls to wait in the taxi at an Irving transit hub while he went to a bus stop because he thought the person stalking them was after him. Said claimed, "I told them the car is yours, you do whatever you want since they knew how to drive, I left the car for them," adding that he thought the transit centers' cameras would protect his girls. "It was a scary situation." Said stated that when he left his girls in the taxi on Riverside Drive, they were "certainly" alive.
He later claimed to the jury on Monday, that he went on foot to a Waffle House where he discovered "something had happened to somebody" before discovering that his daughters had been killed. Invoking the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, Said's defense attorneys said he had a legal obligation to withhold any information regarding his life after the deaths of his children because he is being charged on separate federal counts for allegedly eluding justice.
At one point, Said emphasized that although he was aware that the FBI was looking for him, he chose not to turn himself in because he believed he would not receive a fair trial and that the media's treatment of his case was too harsh. "I don’t think in the history of America there was a case that had the coverage that my case had," he stated.
The power and fear Said exercised over his family, including choosing who they would speak with, were described by prosecutors and witnesses over the course of three days. His ex-wife, Patricia Owens, even revealed before the jury that her kids had accused him of sexual abuse back in 1998 and had since relocated to a different region of the state. She claimed that her daughters had withdrawn their accusations against her ex-husband out of fear, referred to Said as "the devil," and labeled him "abusive." Said denied his ex-wife's accusations and said "women are protected more than men in America” and insisted that he never threatened to kill Owens."
According to prosecutors, Said had grown angrier as a result of feeling as though he had lost control over his wife and daughters because they had begun dating non-Muslim men. According to Owens, she, her daughters, and their boyfriends fled to Oklahoma on Christmas Day. Amina and Sarah eventually made their way back to the Dallas area on New Year's Eve after Said eventually reported them missing the next day to the Lewisville Police Department. Brother Islam Said's whereabouts at the time have not been made public by the authorities.
Despite believing he was being followed, Said admitted during cross-examination that he never dialed 911 that evening. The daughters were allegedly shot close to the Omni Hotel before 7.30 p.m., according to the authorities. Around that time, Sarah Said made two 911 calls, emphasizing that her father had shot her and she was "dying." Amina sustained two bullet wounds, while her sister was shot nine times, according to testimony given last week by a medical examiner.
Prosecutor Lauren Black made the statement," she’s asking for help and she names her killer, her father, Yaser Said," when the 911 call was played for the jury last week. But on Monday, when the jury asked Said if he killed his daughters, he said, "For sure did not."