An Egyptian father who killed his daughters aged 18 and 17 because they were ‘too Americanized’ reportedly refused to admit his guilt.
65-year-old Yaser Said, who was working as a driver in Texas, was found guilty of capital murder in the tragic deaths of his daughters Sarah Said, 17, and Amina Said, 18.
The father will receive an automatic life sentence as prosecutors did not pursue the death penalty.
On Monday, Said told the court that his daughters were alive when he left them in the cab, adding that he fled because he feared that someone was following him.
The father also said on the stand that he and his daughters were going to a restaurant when he tried to run away from whoever he believed was following them.
Lauren Black, prosecuting, told jurors that Said was ‘obsessed with possession and control.’
The siblings were found with gunshot wounds in a taxi parked outside the Omni Mandalay Hotel in Texas on New Year’s Day in 2008.
Sarah Said managed to call 911 and told the operator that she was dying.
“Help, my dad shot me! I’m dying,” she said.
Amina Said was shot twice while her sister was shot nine times, the jurors heard.
A week before the sisters were shot to death, the teens and their mother went to Oklahoma to run away from Said. The girls’ boyfriends also came with them.
“I didn’t think anything would happen,” mother Patricia Owens testified.
The father wrote to the judge and said that he was not happy with his children’s ‘dating activity’ but he firmly denied killing them.
It is believed that he committed the honor killing – a practice were a person is murdered for bringing perceived shame on the family – after he found out that Amina had a non-Muslim boyfriend. He also thought that the girls were becoming ‘too American.’
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