Capital murder trial begins for Texas man who murdered his teenage daughters in 2008
The trial of 65-year-old Texas cab driver Yaser Abdel Said has begun after 14 years. Said is accused of murdering his two teenage daughters in what their great-aunt has called "honor killings.”
On New Year’s Day in 2008, Said shot and killed his two daughters, Sarah Yaser Said, 17, and Amina Yaser Said, 18.
For the next 12 years, a capital murder warrant was out for his arrest. He was on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List for six years until his capture in August 2020 in Justin, 36 miles from Dallas.
The sisters were found inside their father’s cab outside the Omni hotel in Irving with multiple gunshot wounds. One of the girls was in the front passenger seat and the other in the backseat.
Sarah Yaser was the one to call police about the incident. She was heard crying and saying, “Help, my dad shot me! I’m dying, I’m dying!”
After the 911 call, authorities failed to find the two teenage girls, but an hour later, with the help of another caller, they were able to locate the girls. Police received a call from someone inside the Omni Hotel saying he could see blood inside of a cab and that “They [the girls] don’t look alive.”
Once police arrived at the scene, the two girls were found deceased, but Said was nowhere to be found.
A week before their deaths, Patricia Said had left for Oklahoma with her daughters out of fear for their lives and because Said had “put a gun to Amina’s head and threatened to kill her,” according to prosecutor Lauren Black.
At the trial, prosecutors introduced an email that Amina had written to her teacher at Lewisville High School, days before her death. Amina said in the email that her father was arranging her marriage, so she and her sister planned to flee. “He will kill us,” she wrote.
The sisters’ aunt, Connie Moggio, was present at the trial and told the jury that she spoke to Amina the day of the murders. She testified, according to NBC, that "she [Amina] didn't want to go home. She would rather be dead than ever go back there."
Sarah’s boyfriend at the time, Erik Panameno, testified that Sarah had kept their relationship a secret because, “Something would happen to me, or something would happen to her.”
In a letter Said wrote to the judge, he said that he didn’t approve of his daughters’ “dating activity” but that he didn’t kill them.
Defense attorney Joseph Patton said in an opening statement that police were quick to point fingers at Said during the investigation and “suggested that anti-Muslim sentiment” played a role. He continued his defense by adding that police should have looked into Patricia Said and Amina’s boyfriend, considering “they were the last people to see Amina and Sarah alive.”
Amina’s boyfriend, Edgar Ruiz, testified that he and his father had seen Said and both girls in the cab before the shooting. Ruiz told jurors, “Her look was fear, she didn’t look like she wanted to be there.”
Said pleaded not guilty on Tuesday. If declared guilty of capital murder, Yaser Abdel Said faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.
