When prosecutors asked Patricia Owens to identify her ex-husband Yaser Said, 65, in court Thursday, she pointed to the man accused of killing her two daughters, 17-year-old Sarah and 18-year-old Amina, NBC 5 reported .
“That devil over there,” she said as she testified about years of abuse she and her two daughters allegedly suffered at Said’s hands.
The Egyptian taxi driver, who lived with his family north of Dallas, allegedly shot and killed his daughters in his taxi after telling them they were going out for dinner on New Year’s Day in 2008.
It is widely believed that Saeed committed an honor killing – a practice where people are killed for bringing shame on their family – after he discovered the girls had non-Muslim friends and thought they were becoming “very American”.
Patricia Owens (pictured) called her ex-husband, Yaser Said, “that devil” during the trial for the murder of their two teenage daughters on Thursday.
Said, 65, is accused of shooting to death Sarah, 17, and Amina, 18, on New Year’s Day 2008 in what prosecutors call “honor killings” because the girls had allegedly shamed him for being “too American.” ‘
Sarah (left) and Amina (right) had run away from their father many times before they died
During her testimony, Owens said she married Said in 1987 when she was just 15 and he was 29, giving birth to her three children within the first three years of their marriage.
In 1998, Owens filed a report with the Hill County Sheriff’s Office, accusing Said of sexually abusing the two girls.
He said he left with all three children for months before finally returning to the family’s home near Waco and telling the girls to retract their stories.
Owens and her daughters fled again in 2007, moving to Tulsa, Oklahoma, after the girls said they feared for their lives if they stayed with their father.
She noted that Said allegedly looked at the girls’ phone records and called the numbers to see if they belonged to a boy or a girl.
Despite running away from him, Owens and the girls returned to the Texas home because they feared there would be “repercussions” if they didn’t.
When prosecutors asked Owens if she knew what would happen when they returned, she said: “Part of me did. A part of me didn’t.”
Photo: Yaser Said during his trial. He refused to look at officials who detailed the bodies of girls found inside his cabin.
Owens claimed that Said went through each of the girls’ phones and called their contacts to find out if it was a boy or a girl
The grieving mother described Saeed as abusive and controlling and said she kept going back to him because she feared the “repercussions” if she didn’t.
In the years following the 1998 allegations, friends of the girls reported frequently seeing them with bruises on their bodies or witnessing Said physically abusing his family.
The girls reportedly confided in friends that their father was obsessively controlling them and that they often feared he was following them wherever they went.
In a home video recorded by Said, the girls are filmed in their bedroom, while Said can be heard saying suggestively “Sarah sleeps in her pants? Mmm, very nice” and “Wow, look at those eyes. I got my eye on you.’
Along with Owen’s testimony, the court was also shown the bullet-riddled clothing of the victims and heard the 911 call Sarah made immediately after the shooting.
“Help, my dad shot me! I’m dying,” Sarah said in the call she managed to make after she was shot. Investigators said Amina was killed instantly.
Police received Sarah’s frantic 911 call at approximately 7:30 p.m. that New Year’s Day. Although she blamed her father on the call, she appeared to pass out before dispatchers could determine her location or any other information.
Shortly after the call, officers received another call from a man reporting two women unconscious in a car in the parking lot of the Omni Mandalay Hotel in Irving, Texas.
There, police found the girls dead inside their father’s taxi with multiple gunshot wounds each.
Said immediately became the prime suspect, and when authorities raided the family home the next day he was nowhere to be found.
Said (right) is pictured with his son Islam and daughters Sarah (centre, right) and Amina (left). Islam helped house his father after he allegedly murdered the girls
Said spent six years on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list
Said’s son Islam (left) and his brother Yassein (right). Both are serving time in federal prison for sheltering Said while he was a wanted fugitive
Said spent six years on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.
He was found hiding in Justin, Texas – just 30 miles from the scene of the murder – where he was being hosted by his son Islam, who was 19 at the time of the murders, and his brother Yaseen, who was about 45.
Both relatives were arrested after the arrest and are serving sentences in federal prison.
Owens said she never spoke to Said again after the girls’ deaths and divorced him in 2009. She said she feared her ex-husband would show up and kill her one day.
In 2011, while Said was still at large, Owens told the Dallas Morning News that she believed the murders could have been due to her ex-husband’s belief that the girls were embarrassing the family with their Western ways.
“He would say things like, ‘They’re getting too American,’” she said.
