‘Now the girls can rest,’ mom says after dad arrested in daughters’ 2008 Texas murders
Just before Christmas in 2007, a Lewisville taxi driver threatened to kill his wife and their two daughters, according to a warrant.
Yaser Said had threatened them several times before that Christmas, his wife told police.
On the night of Jan. 1, 2008, Irving police found Amina Said, 18, hunched over in the passenger seat of her father’s taxi. Her sister, Sarah Said, 17, was found in the back seat. Both had been shot multiple times.
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 on Thursday.
Thus began a search for Yaser Said, who would elude authorities for years and make his way onto the FBI’s Most Wanted Fugitive list.
But federal officials, who said investigators “never gave up their quest to find him,” ended Yaser Said’s freedom on Wednesday. An FBI SWAT team arrested the 63-year-old Egyptian native without incident in Justin, where he had been living, according to jail records.
“I am very happy,” said Patricia Owens, the mother of the girls, in a telephone interview with the Star-Telegram on Thursday. “It was the happiest moment. Now the girls can rest in peace.”
Yaser Said was in the Irving Jail on Thursday and is expected to be charged with capital murder in the shooting deaths of Amina and Sarah Said.
Yaser’s son Islam Said, 32, and brother Yassein Said, 59, both of Euless, were also arrested Wednesday. They are accused of harboring a fugitive.
The two also were in the Irving Jail on Thursday.
“We are also sad to know, although not surprised, that Islam was helping his father,” Owens said in a prepared statement. “We hope that Islam too will be punished accordingly for his part in the girls’ murders and the hiding of Yaser, along with anyone else who has or will be arrested for aiding in hiding him.”
The killings of the Said sisters drew national attention when some family members said that the girls were victims of an “honor killing” because their father thought they had brought shame to the family.
Authorities have declined to comment on a motive.
“I don’t know how you can use the term honor and killing in this instance,” Irving Police Chief Jeff Spivey said Wednesday night. “This man brutally murdered, shot to death, his two daughters in his taxi cab. What led him to do that I think at this point to us is irrelevant.”
According to the AHA Foundation, a New York-based organization that focuses on protecting women and girls, “honor violence is a form of violence against women committed with the motive of protecting or regaining the honor of the perpetrator, family, or community. Victims of honor violence are targeted because their actual or perceived behavior is deemed to be shameful or to violate cultural or religious norms.”
In 2014, a documentary was released about the case in order to keep the investigation going. “The Price of Honor” was almost two-hour documentary that included a secret plan by Amina Said to protect her boyfriend from her father.
The documentary also concludes that Said did not flee to Egypt, but that he was hiding in plain sight in the U.S.
Said’s last confirmed sighting had been in Irving in 2008, according to FBI officials. Aggressive investigative work, not a tip, led to Said’s arrest, said FBI Dallas Special Agent in Charge Matthew DeSarno. He declined to give more details of how Said was found.
The girls were well-liked and made good grades at Lewisville High School, acquaintances said. Their father was strict and rarely let them spend time with friends. When Sarah, 17, met a boy at her job, she told a friend that her father would kill her if he found out.
Yaser Said had threatened to harm Sarah after he learned that she had gone out with a non-Muslim boy, according to a police report. Yaser Said had a history of violence toward his daughters, and his wife feared for her life, according to the report.
Authorities have said a domestic dispute may have led to the shooting, but investigators provided no details about the dispute or who might have been involved.
Authorities believe that Said took his daughters for a ride in his taxi on Jan. 1, 2008, under the guise of taking them to get something to eat. He pulled into the parking lot of the Omni Mandalay Hotel in Las Colinas and shot his two daughters, police have said.
Sarah managed to make a 911 cellphone call, alerting Irving police to the shootings, but she was unable to tell police her location.
During the call, she could be heard repeatedly telling the operator that she was dying.
“Help!” Sarah said in the call. “My dad shot me.”
Officers were dispatched to the area of O’Connor Boulevard and Riverside Drive, but they couldn’t find the girls.
An hour later, a witness reported seeing a suspicious taxi in the Omni parking lot in the 200 block of E. Las Colinas Boulevard.
Capital murder and unlawful flight to avoid prosecution warrants were issued for Yaser Said after the girls were found dead in the taxi.
This story was originally published August 27, 2020 at 4:33 PM.
