Irving man admits to harboring fugitive father accused of murdering teenage daughters

An Irving man pleaded guilty Tuesday to helping his fugitive father elude capture for more than a dozen years in the alleged murders of his two teenage daughters, federal authorities said.

Islam Yaser-Abdel Said, 32, entered a guilty plea to conspiracy to conceal a person from arrest, concealing a person from arrest, and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.

Islam Said faces up to 30 years in prison for helping his father, Yaser Said, who was captured in August and is being held in state custody on capital murder charges. Yaser Said, 63, is suspected of killing 18-year-old Amina Said and 17-year-old Sarah Said on New Year’s Day 2008. Authorities said he shot them in his taxicab and left it outside an Irving hotel.

The alleged double murder landed Yaser Said on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list.

Islam Said is scheduled to be sentenced on April 30 in federal court in Fort Worth.

“Islam Said prioritized the whims of his father, an alleged killer, over justice for his own sisters. Thanks to the dogged work of the FBI and its law enforcement partners, however, Mr. Said’s efforts were ultimately in vain,” U.S. Attorney Prerak Shah said in a statement. “We are grateful to the many agents and officers who worked to apprehend Mr. Said, along with his father and uncle. Sarah and Amina deserve justice.”

Islam Said harbored his father inside his Bedford apartment with the help of his uncle, Yassein Abdulfatah Said, who is also charged in federal court in the case, according to court records.

Yaser Said was nearly captured in August 2017 when a maintenance worker responded to a water leak in the apartment and spotted him. The worker told the FBI he recognized Yaser as the fugitive, authorities said. An agent went to interview Islam, but he refused to cooperate and instead called his uncle to say, “We have a big problem,” prosecutors said.

When police arrived at the apartment it was empty, but officers noticed a large bush with broken branches below the patio, suggesting someone had jumped to the ground, court records show. They also found a pair of glasses near the bush.

Islam Said later harbored his father inside a home in Justin that belonged to his cousin, according to authorities. FBI agents watched Islam Said and his uncle in August deliver grocery bags to the house and then followed them to a shopping center nearly 20 miles away in Southlake where they dumped trash from the home, prosecutors said.

Yaser Said was arrested Aug. 26 after authorities searched the Justin house and found him. What appeared to be a hidden room with a cot was found in the back of the home’s converted garage, a federal complaint said. He remains in the Dallas County Jail and faces the death penalty if convicted of capital murder.

Yassein Said, 59, the uncle, is scheduled to go to trial on Feb. 1.

The defendants hold dual citizenship in the U.S. and Egypt, court records show.

Prosecutors say Yaser Said’s DNA was found inside his son’s apartment.

Islam Said’s attorney said in a December court filing that his client has an IQ of about 59, and he had planned to introduce evidence of his “extremely low mental capabilities” to show he didn’t have intent to commit the crime, court records show.

Prosecutors said last month in court documents that Yaser Said admitted to being in his son’s apartment in 2017. The murder suspect told Irving police detectives that he “jumped from the balcony of the apartment after someone came to the apartment and landed in the gravel below,” according to court records.

“Yaser Said told the detectives that he had been in the United States all this time,” the court documents say.

At the time of the shooting, police noted that there had been domestic problems in the Said family. Only a week before, the sisters, their boyfriends and their mother fled the state, renting an apartment in Oklahoma under an assumed name because of threats Yaser Said had made after learning about his daughters’ relationships, friends and relatives said.

But they returned to Lewisville on New Year’s Eve. Sarah Said called 911 the night of Jan. 1, 2008, telling a dispatcher that she’d been shot. The Lewisville High School students both had been shot multiple times, authorities said. Police surrounded the family’s house the next day and entered after firing tear gas inside. But the house was empty.

Patricia Owens, the victims’ mother and Said’s former wife, later told authorities that her son and Yaser Said’s brothers said things that indicated support for the killings, court documents say.

There was public sentiment — fueled by Yaser Said’s Muslim faith — that the sisters were shot in an honor killing, a practice in some cultures in which men kill female relatives thought to have dishonored their families.