17-year-old was shot 9 times, her sister twice, doctors say at Texas father’s murder trial

A 17-year-old was shot nine times while her older sister suffered two gunshot wounds inside a taxi near an Irving hotel on the night of Jan. 1, 2008, doctors testified Friday in their father’s murder trial.

At least one of the gunshot wounds found in 17-year-old Sarah Said came as the gunman held the weapon against her, forensic pathologist Dr. Janis Townsend-Parchman told the Dallas County jury Friday afternoon. Her body was found in the cab’s back seat.

“There was contact,” Townsend-Parchman said.

Dr. Amy Gruszecki also told jurors that 18-year-old Amina Said suffered two gunshot wounds to her chest. She was found in the front seat of the taxi.

“Either one (of the shots) could have killed her,” Gruszecki testified.

Yaser Said, their father, is accused of his daughters’ murders.

The 65-year-old man kept his eyes down Friday afternoon as the doctors testified about the autopsies performed on his daughters.

Testimony in his trial started Tuesday and will resume on Monday.

The trial is being held in Criminal District Court No. 7 in Dallas.

After the fatal shooting, Yaser Said fled the scene and escaped authorities for 12 years, prosecutors have said.

But a shadow, trash and surveillance brought an end to the search for the fugitive, according to federal authorities.

FBI agents arrested Said at a Justin home in August 2020 after a shadow was seen at the house and authorities picked up a trash bag left by family members of Said at a Panera Bread in Southlake.

“There were food items, a Coke can and at least 50 to 60 cigarette butts,” FBI Special Agent Daniel Gimenez, who was involved in the search, testified Friday. “We got search warrants for the Justin home and another home in Euless.”

An FBI SWAT team entered the Justin home on the afternoon of Aug. 26, 2020, and found Yaser Said, who had been living alone in a room in the garage, he said.

Gimenez testified that a massive search was conducted throughout the country for years, including in Georgia, North Carolina, New York, Wisconsin, Oregon and California.

The FBI agent told the jury authorities were aware that family members lived in North Texas in cities that included Euless, Bedford, Haltom City and Southlake.

Financial records tipped authorities off that the Said family had a home in Justin.

Some family members said that the girls were victims of “honor killings” because their father thought they had brought shame to the family.

Yaser Said has sent several letters to the judge in Dallas, proclaiming his innocence, according to WFAA-TV.

In one letter he wrote, “I was not happy about my kids’ dating activity. But, I did not do the killings or any plan to hurt them,” WFAA reported.

Prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty. If convicted, Said will be automatically sentenced to life without parole.

Said pleaded not guilty on Tuesday on the first day of testimony in his trial.

His son and brother have been sentenced to prison for hiding him.

This week, defense attorneys have argued that Yaser Said was targeted as a suspect because he is a Muslim and that evidence indicated the investigation was botched

Defense attorney Joseph Patton said that 16 surveillance cameras at Omni Mandalay Hotel in Irving, where the killings occurred, never captured an image of a suspect.

On Friday morning, Said’s defense attorney continued to raise doubts about the investigation, questioning a former Irving police detective on seeking other suspects in the killings.

Retired Irving Detective Joe Henning testified that the girls’ boyfriends, who went to Irving police just shortly after the deadly shooting on Jan. 1, 2008, were not suspects even though Yaser Said’s son told police that they needed to be interviewed.

Defense attorneys also have noted that there were no fingerprints, no weapon, and no bloody clothes or footprints found in the investigation.

Patton continued on Friday afternoon to question Gimenez on the investigation, arguing that Irving police failed to seek other suspects.

“The investigation was properly conducted by local authorities,” Gimenez testified.

On Christmas Day in 2007, the girls and their mother, Patricia Owens, who was then Yaser Said’s wife, fled the family’s Lewisville home because they feared Yaser Said, she said.

Patricia Owens has testified this week that she was scared of her husband, and Yaser Said had threatened the girls.

But Patricia Owens and the girls returned back to their home by Jan. 1, 2008.

On that night, Yaser Said told his wife that he was taking the girls out to dinner, but he didn’t invite her, she said.

A few hours later, the girls died from multiple gunshot wounds as they sat in Said’s taxi near the Omi Mandalay Hotel.

After the shooting, Said was on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list.

Federal court documents do not indicate where he was from January 2008 until August 2017.

Nine years after the killings, investigators got a break when a maintenance worker at the Copper Canyon Apartments in Bedford spotted Yaser Said in an apartment rented by his son Islam Said, federal agents said.

FBI agents had told apartment officials before that encounter that Islam Said was renting an apartment there and that he was the son of a wanted fugitive.

After the sighting, on Aug. 14, 2017, an FBI agent tried to interview Islam Said, wanting to ask him who was inside the Bedford apartment and get consent to search it. Islam Said refused to cooperate and called his attorney. Later, authorities discovered that Islam Said called someone and told them, “we have a big problem,” according to the criminal complaint against him.

On Friday, Bedford apartment maintenance worker Jorge Camacho testified he saw Yaser Said at the apartment.

Camacho arrived to work on a leak in a bathroom.

“He followed me to the restroom,” Camacho told the jury in Spanish. A translator repeated his testimony in English. “He kept his head down, but he later lifted it.”

Authorities arrived a few minutes later, but Yaser Said had left.

Months later, test results on DNA collected from the apartment indicated that Yaser Said had been there.

Years passed before federal authorities got another break, and Yaser Said was found and arrested at the Justin home.