Breathy cries for help flooded a Dallas County courtroom Wednesday morning as jurors’ eyes widened and their brows furrowed.
“Help. My dad shot me. … I’m dying. I’m dying. I’m dying,” a girl’s voice uttered in a recorded 911 call played by prosecutors.
It was the second day of testimony in the capital murder trial of a father accused of killing his teenage daughters more than a decade ago.
Jurors and spectators heard two 911 audio recordings from the evening of the killings and saw photos of the girls’ bullet-ridden bodies in a taxicab. One of the calls was from 17-year-old Sarah Said in her dying moments. The second call was made by a manager at the Omni Mandalay Hotel in Irving who discovered Sarah and her older sister, Amina Said.
Yaser Said, 65, is accused of fatally shooting Sarah and 18-year-old Amina on New Year’s Day 2008. Amina was shot twice and Sarah was shot nine times, lawyers have said. If convicted, Said faces an automatic life sentence because prosecutors aren’t seeking the death penalty.
Said was on the lam for 12 years until he was arrested in August 2020 at a family house in Denton County. Said’s son, Islam Said, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for helping him hide. Said’s brother, Yassein Said, got 12 years for the same conviction.
Amina and Sarah, Lewisville High School honor students and athletes, have been described as smart, bubbly and spirited. The duo dreamed of becoming doctors.
Yaser Said shifted back and forth in his chair while Sarah’s 911 call played. At one point he leaned over to a translator next to him and whispered, waving his right hand. His eyes were dry. A medical mask covered his mouth.
“Oh my god. Not again. Stop it. Stop it,” Sarah cried in the call.
The first 30 seconds of the recording, when Sarah can be heard in distress, were played three times. Each time, jurors fidgeted in their seats.
Nathan Watson, the hotel manager on duty that night, said another taxi driver found the girls after the car they were in stalled a line of drivers outside the hotel.
Watson, 45, told jurors he saw a young woman in the passenger’s seat and knocked on the window or door but got no response. It was dark but he could see her eyes were “fixed open” and “stuff was coming out of her nose.”
“They don’t look alive,” Watson told a 911 call taker. He didn’t see the driver anywhere, he said in the call.
Defense lawyers emphasized that no one reported seeing Said that night — and no footage from 16 hotel cameras captured him — even though the hotel was bustling with guests in town for the holiday and Cotton Bowl football game.
Photos: First Day In Trial Of Yaser Said, Who Is Accused Of Shooting His Daughters In Irving On New Year’s Day 2008.
Richard Bracey, who has since retired as an Irving police officer, testified he was dispatched to look for a distressed woman after Sarah’s call about 7:30 p.m. When Watson called 911 an hour later, Bracey responded to the hotel after circling the Las Colinas area because the call-taker did not get Sarah’s location.
He found Amina slumped to her right side inside the car. She wore a thick brown jacket with fur trim. Sarah leaned on the backseat door behind her sister. Blood soaked her Hollister T-shirt. Bracey grew quiet, and his voice broke as he recalled seeing the girls.
Said, at a table a few feet away, looked to his side and blinked.
Bracey said he opened the front passenger door and checked Amina for signs of life. There were none.
Said lifted his mask and sipped water. He appeared emotionless as Bracey recalled telling dispatch there were two dead bodies. More officers swarmed the area and started their investigation.
“I stayed with the girls,” Bracey said as he fought back tears and covered his forehead with his hand.
Steven Hazard, another now-retired Irving police officer, told jurors a burn mark around the gunshot wound on Sarah’s chest means she was shot from very close range. Her shirt was torn where the bullet ripped through. Blood also soaked her sweater, a brown zip-up peppered with images of puppies.
Another photo showed a shell casing next to her left foot, pink and yellow polka dot socks exposed.
Hazard, who led the investigation, also found three bullet holes near the back tire, underneath the seat where Sarah sat. But no projectiles were found outside the cab at the hotel, he said. The evidence indicates the girls were killed elsewhere, Hazard testified.
Prosecutors questioned why Hazard didn’t test the car for fingerprints. He said that step wasn’t necessary because Sarah identified her shooter in the 911 call and because a taxi cab would likely be littered with lots of passengers’ prints.
Photos taken the night of the slayings and later at an impound lot were projected onto screens around the courtroom during Hazard’s testimony.
One juror closed her eyes and appeared to sigh as Hazard said the girls’ bodies had become rigid; another tensed as images of car seats darkened with blood were plastered on the screens.
Said watched Hazard speak, looking down at his lap a few times.
Earlier in the trial, the girls’ then-boyfriends testified the teens feared their father would kill them if he found out they were dating.
The girls fled the state with their boyfriends and their mother, Patricia Owens, shortly before their deaths. But they returned to North Texas days later after Owens convinced them it would be safe, the men testified Tuesday.
Said’s defense lawyers said police should have done more forensic testing to see if the boyfriends were involved in the killings. Amina’s boyfriend, Edgar Ruiz, testified for the prosecution Tuesday. On Wednesday, defense lawyers questioned him about whether he knew Amina was still communicating with an ex-boyfriend. He said he did not.
The prosecution’s case continues Thursday, and the trial could go into next week, lawyers said.
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