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Associated Press
Dallas (AP) — A man accused of fatally shooting two teenage daughters in a taxi in the Dallas area in 2008 was told by a jury on Monday in a capital murder trial that someone gave him. I wanted to kill you.
"Never, I didn't kill my daughter," said Yassel Saeed, whose testimony in Arabic was translated into English.
Saeed avoided arrest for more than 12 years after his daughters, 18-year-old Amina Sayed and 17-year-old Sarah Sayed, were killed. Yasser Sayed, who faces life imprisonment when he is convicted, said he did not tighten himself because he did not expect him to be tried fairly.
Both the prosecution and the defense took a break from the proceedings on Monday afternoon. The jury is set to hear closing arguments on Tuesday morning.
Saeed, 65, worked as a taxi driver. A former police detective testified that a taxi, whose sister's body was found near the hotel, was rented to Saeed on New Year's Day 2008.
Sarasade was shot nine times and Aminasade was shot twice.
In a letter to the judge overseeing the case, Saeed said he was not happy with the "dating activities" of his children, but denied the killing of his daughters. ..
The jury wanted to "solve the problem" after they left home a week ago and went to Oklahoma with their mother and them the night the sisters were killed. The boyfriend who said he took them to dinner.
"In my culture, I was upset because it was upset," said Saeed, who testified that he was born in Egypt, came to the United States in 1983. , Later Americans.
Prosecutor Lauren Black said in the opening statement that the sisters were "extremely afraid of their lives," and Saeed "pointed a gun at Amina's head and killed her." A decision was made to leave after "threatening." Black told the jury that Saeed was "obsessed with ownership and control."
Saeed's ex-wife, Patricia Owens, testified that Saeed eventually persuaded her to return from Oklahoma to Texas.
Saeed testified that when he was driving for dinner with his daughters on the night his daughters were killed, he thought someone was chasing a taxi. He didn't know who it was, but thought it might be his daughter's friend, he said. He testified that someone was afraid to harm him, so he left his daughters in a taxi and bumped into a nearby forest.
"I didn't expect anyone to harm them," Saeed testified.
The jury heard 911 calls from her cell phone and told the operator that her father had shot her and she was dying.
Defendant lawyer Joseph Patton said in the opening statement that the evidence did not support the conviction and police were too quick to focus on Saeed. He also said that people can be hallucinating at moments of extreme trauma, such as being shot multiple times.
Amina Sayed's boyfriend testified that on the night she and her sister were killed, he and his father saw them in a taxi with their father.
Yassel Saeed, who has been sought a murder warrant since the murder, has been added to the FBI's most wanted list. He was finally arrested in August 2020 in Justin, about 35 miles (60 kilometers) northwest of Dallas. His son Islam Sed and his brother Yassim Saeed were subsequently convicted of helping him avoid arrest.