Slain Texas Sisters Amina and Sarah Said: One Year Later and Still No Justice

January 1^st, 2008. The bodies of Amina Said, 18 and her sister Sarah Said, 17 were in a taxi left at the Omni Mandalay Hotel car park in Irving, Texas. The sisters had been brutally murdered. Amina had been shot twice, autopsy reports revealed that she died almost instantly from a shattered spinal cord. Sarah had been shot 9 times, her death had been slower, painful. Still, it was Sarah who still managed to place a 911 to police an hour before. She told a police dispatcher that she had been shot and that the perpetrator had been none other than her own father, Yaser Said.

Road to Tragedy

In the months that ensued details would start to emerge that would paint a very dark and tragic picture. Between the actions of the girls' father, brother and mother; coupled with the societal fear, cultural sensitivity and political correctness that sometimes cripple; these girls didn't stand a chance.

On the outside, both girls were picture perfect. Beautiful, athletic and intelligent. They were honor students and active in Tennis and Soccer. Both had a bright future ahead of them. Both of them had aspirations to be doctors. Yet the secret they kept was darker than most knew.

According to the Dallas Post, schoolmates of the girls noticed that they often came in with welts and bruises. Amina confided in a friend that it was her father that beat her and her sister. Zohair Zaidi, a friend of Sarah's told an interviewer with America's Most Wanted that Sarah had told him "He(her father) treats me like a whore,"

Also reported by the Dallas Post are accounts of friends who saw Amina's braces embedded into her lips from Yaser kicking her in the face. She was denied medical attention by her parents, who feared Yaser would have had to answer to the police.

Patricia's sister, Connie Moggio told the Dallas Post " his (Yaser's) controlling and violent nature gripped the family from the start." According to Moggio, "once, he shot out the tires on his wife's car to keep her home." Another time, he blocked Moggio's car when she was trying to help Patricia and the children leave.

December, 2007. Yaser Said was having trouble with his daughters. Amina and Sarah, were drifting further from the culture he had intended for them. The Egyptian born Muslim was increasingly agitated with his daughter's western behavior, outlook, and dress sense. Amina, the oldest, had turned down the marriage proposal of a 40 year old Egyptian man. Two years prior, Yasser had moved from to Lewisville in order to separate Amina from a boy she was purportedly 'seeing'. Yaser has planned for Amina to go back to Egypt and be married. Amina had been accepted, on scholarship to Texas A&M. She wanted to be a doctor.

In the week after Christmas, the violence in the Said household escalated. Yaser had found out that both his daughters had boyfriends. He would later find out that Amina was sexually active with her college student boyfriend, Eddie. He was furious. According to colleagues at the Kroger supermarket where the girls and their mother, worked, Sarah and Amina came in crying, in hysterics. The girls told their mother that Yasser threatened to kill them and was waving a gun at them.

With some delay, Sarah, Amina, Patricia and the girls boyfriends' headed to Oklahoma. Sarah sent a text message to her friend during that time. It read, "Me mina and my mom r running away! ..My dad found out abt mina and is goin to kill us....B4 he tld me that he was goin to put bullet thru her head."

In Oklahoma, the five found an apartment and even managed to purchase a few furnishings. The stay at the apartment however, would be a short one. No one is clear as to why Patricia brought her daughters back to Texas when she had told police and relatives that she feared for their safety and that Yaser would kill them. What is known is that she lied to the girls so they would follow her.

Knowing her daughters would not want to go back to the family home, Patricia told them that she wished to place flowers on the grave of her mother. It was a ploy. When Amina realized where her mother was headed, she refused to see her father and stayed with friends instead. Sarah, the purportedly more obedient of the sisters returned with her mother . In what appears to have been a bid to save herself from her father's wrath, she also ended it with her boyfriend.

New Year's Day

Amina would later be coaxed by her mother and brother ,Islam, into agreeing to have tea with her father, sister and some of the father's family. When she arrived at the house she would get into a cab driven by her father. Fifteen minutes later, Patricia would receive a call from Sarah. She ignored it. The next known call by Sarah was to 911, it would be the last time she was heard alive.

Disturbing information

The story darkens.

While most were aware of Yaser's violent temper, most did not know that Yaser had been visited by police once before.

Almost 10 years before the shooting deaths of the Said sisters, Amina and Sarah had accused their father of sexual abuse. At ages 8 and 9, the allegations were reported to the Hill County sheriff's office. The girls told a detective their father had been touching them inappropriately. Amina told authorities she had been penetrated at least once. Patricia Said swore in an affidavit that the allegations were true.

Then in early January 1999, the two girls would recant. They told authorities that they had lied about the allegations because they didn't want to attend rural Covington schools. Instead they said, they had wanted to go live with their grandmother. A district judge later dropped the charges of aggravated sexual assault against Mr. Said.

In 2008, Amina would confide in boyfriend Eddie. She had indeed been sexually assaulted by her father.

Honor Killing?

There has been additional controversy surrounding this case. The local police department, FBI and even the media have been hesitant to brand this as an Honor Killing. An Honor killing is defined as the murder of a family (or clan) member by one or more fellow family members, when the murderers believe the victim to have brought dishonor upon the family (or clan). Patricia Said's family have said this is most definitely an honor killing. They believe that Sarah and Amina were killed for refusing to accept the their father's culture and religion. They did not want to be Egyptian Muslims. They wanted to Americans. And for that they paid with their lives.

Yaser Said's Egyptian family disagree, saying that Islam is a peaceful religion and that Yaser did not act out of his religion. Amina and Sarah's brother, Islam Said, agreed stating "Why is it every time an Arab father kills a daughter, it's an honor killing?...It didn't have anything to do with that."

Patricia Said, the girls' mother has also backed the idea that this was not an honor killing, Brigitte Gabriel, author of "Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America," says otherwise. According to Gabriel, "This crime has honor killing written all over it...The father was insulted and ashamed of how his daughters were behaving."

While honor killings remain a problem in many Muslim countries, many North America based Islamic organizations generally stay away from the topic. The United Nations estimates that at least 5000 women are murdered every year in these killings, though the number is though to be inaccurate as most of these murders go unreported in societies were they are deemed 'just' or 'normal.'

Whatever the label, this tragedy was the result of two cultures that didn't fit together. Amina and Sarah struggled to find and become themselves in Texas, faraway from their father's homeland in Egypt. Yaser Said, according to his Egyptian family, was not a religious man. Yet the standards he used to judge his daughter were cultural, stemming from his background.

Amina and Sarah often told schoolmates they feared their father. Kathleen Wong, Sarah's best friend says "Even at school if a teacher joked around like, 'I'm gonna tell your parents about this', she would like totally flip out and start crying like, 'please don't tell'." Both girls had said on more than one occasion that they were afraid their father would kill them. Similar statements have been made by teenagers everywhere. However, when said by Sarah and Amina that statement held a much truer meaning.

Phyllis Chesler, professor emerita of psychology and women's studies at the College of Staten Island (CUNY) and author of 13 books had this to say "They could have been saved if a school or police official had been trained to pre-emptively recognize and rescue all such girls and women in danger of being killed by their families in honor killings."

Perhaps we do need to better understand the growing cultures and sub cultures in the United States. This can be done with or without labels. Until we start to understand the problems we're facing, we will always be vulnerable to them.

As for this heartbreakingly tragic case, Honor killing or not. Two beautiful young women are dead, and over a year later, their killer is still at large.

Sources

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/06/20/the-dallas-honor-killings-revisited/

http://worshippingchristian.org/blog/?p=3634

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=568BC1E8-0A6D-4BED-A9BB-D4AF815ECBED

http://www.amw.com/fugitives/case.cfm?id=51983&refresh=1

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/01/10/my-dad-found-out-abt-mina-and-is-goin-to-kill-us/

http://pajamasmedia.com/phyllischesler/2008/01/03/dead_in_dallas_honor_killings/

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,320487,00.html

http://cbs11tv.com/local/Yaser.Abbdel.Said.2.622026.html

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/01/texas-honor-kil.html

http://alwaysonwatch2.blogspot.com/2008/04/murders-of-amina-sarah-said.html

http://muslimsagainstsharia.blogspot.com/2008/10/first-time-fbi-calls-case-honor-killing.html

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http://michellemalkin.com/2008/01/10/my-dad-found-out-abt-mina-and-is-goin-to-kill-us/