A jury Tuesday convicted a Lewisville, Texas, man of murdering his 18 and 17-year-old daughters in 2008.
Yaser Said, 65, eluded capture for over twelve years and landed on the FBI’s Top 10 Most-Wanted Fugitives list in 2014 prior to his August 2020 arrest, The Associated Press reported. Amina had written in an email weeks before her death that she and Sarah planned to run away and she had no doubt he would kill them, according to the AP. (RELATED: ‘It Seems Political’: Andrew Yang Condemns FBI Raid On Mar-A-Lago)
WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 11: The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) headquarters on January 11, 2021 in Washington, DC. Stefani Reynolds/Getty Images
Prosecutors argued that Said, a Muslim, murdered them for living in western ways he found dishonorable, while his defense contended police targeted him for his religion following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The jury’s verdict followed three hours of deliberation, and Judge Chika Anyiam sentenced him to life in prison with no parole possibility, according to ABC News.
The prosecution did seek a death sentence for Said, but his ex-wife and the murdered daughters’ mother Patricia Owens said, “You deserve to die now, not in prison. You took my life. You took my family all in one night.”
“You can keep those evil eyes on me as long as you want. You will never break me down again,” Owens stated, according to the AP. “Nor will you ever be able to hurt another person.”
Yaser Said’s attorney Bradley Lollar told the Daily Caller News Foundation they are appealing the verdict, saying his client always maintained his innocence, there were no eyewitnesses and various involved police agencies could not tell them where the offense happened.
“There was no forensic evidence, such as DNA or fingerprints, etc.” Lollar stated. “And even the state’s experts, the Medical Examiners, testified that ‘ a person who has been shot will be experiencing auditory and even visual hallucinations, and will be in an altered mental state.’”
Yaser Said’s son and brother were respectively sentenced to 10 years and 12 years imprisonment last June for helping him avoid capture, NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth reported.
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