DALLAS –
A man who eluded arrest for more than 12 years after he was accused of fatally shooting his two teenage daughters in a taxi parked near a Dallas-area hotel was “obsessed with possession and control,” a prosecutor said Tuesday in during opening statements on his murder trial.
“He controlled what they did, who they talked to, who they could be friends with, whether and who they could date,” said prosecutor Lauren Black. “And he controlled everything in his household.”
Yasser Said, 65, is accused of killing 18-year-old Amina Said and 17-year-old Sara Said on New Year’s Day in 2008. Said, who pleaded not guilty Tuesday, faces an automatic life sentence if convicted .
About a week before the sisters were killed, they and their mother ran away from their home in the Dallas suburb of Louisville, Oklahoma, to escape Yasser Said, who worked as a taxi driver, Black said. The sisters were “very scared for their lives” and the decision to leave was made after Saeed “put a gun to Amina’s head and threatened to kill her,” the prosecutor said.
But, Black said, in another act of “control” and “manipulation” by Saeed, he told them he had changed and convinced them to return home. The night the sisters were shot, their father wanted to take just the two to a restaurant, she said.
In a letter written to the judge overseeing the case, Saeed said he was unhappy with his children’s “dating” but denied killing his daughters. Defense attorney Joseph Patton said in opening statements that the evidence would not support a conviction, that police were too quick to focus on Saeed, and suggested that anti-Muslim sentiment played a role in that focus. Said was born in Egypt.
Before the sisters were found shot to death in a taxi parked near a hotel in the Dallas suburb of Irving, Sarah Said was able to call 911 using a cell phone, telling the operator that her father had shot her and that she was dying.
Black said Sarah Said was shot nine times and Amina Said was shot twice.
In moments of extreme trauma, such as being shot repeatedly, people can hallucinate, Patton said.
After the sisters were found fatally shot in the taxi, police contacted the taxi’s registered owner, who said Yasser Saeed had been driving the taxi for the past 10 days, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.
Said, who was wanted on a murder warrant after the murder, was placed on the FBI’s most wanted list. He was finally arrested in August 2020 in Justin, about 35 miles (60 kilometers) northwest of Dallas. His son Islam Saeed and his brother Yasim Saeed were subsequently convicted of helping him evade arrest.
Black said the sisters, both high school students in Lewisville, dreamed of becoming doctors and that Yasser Said became “angrier” as they grew older and became more educated and independent.
“When they had more independence, it was less control for him,” Black said.
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