Woman agrees to plead guilty to murder of college student who stopped to help her near off-the-grid encampment
Yasmine Marie Adel Hider, 21, pleaded guilty to kidnapping and murdering 22-year-old Adam Simjee last August
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An Alabama woman who fatally shot a Florida college student hiking with his girlfriend in the Alabama woods will be sentenced to more than 30 years behind bars.
Yasmine Marie Adel Hider, 21, pleaded guilty to kidnapping and murdering 22-year-old Adam Simjee on 14 August 2022 during a robbery near her off-grid encampment in Cheaha State Park, reported AL.com.
Hilder, who is from Oklahoma, flagged down the victim and his girlfriend Mikayla Paulus, who were travelling in his van and looking for waterfalls in the park.
Prosecutors say that she told the couple she needed help with her broken-down car, which was parked nearby, but instead planned to rob them.
When they could not start her car Ms Paulus called his father, who is a mechanic, to ask for some advice. It was then that Hider allegedly pulled out a gun and ordered the couple to “empty their pockets and to walk further into the woods.”
Simjee, who was also armed, told her that “everything we have is in the van, and you can have it.” He then pulled out his own gun and a shootout between the pair took place, in which he was killed by a single shot to the abdomen.
When police arrived at the scene they found the suspect sitting feet away from the victim with three gunshot wounds to the abdomen and one to the upper right leg.
Prosecutors state that when officers started to talk to Hider, she told them she lived in the woods with her family, and asked them how much prison time was going to get.
“I’m going to do time, right? I just want to know how much time?” she asked in a video that was captured on the officer’s body cam equipment, her plea agreement states.
Officers also interviewed her in the hospital, where she asked them “Did he die?” She also told investigators “I didn’t want to hurt anybody,”
And police say she added: “I took his whole life away; now he can’t tell his story.”
Hider agreed to plead guilty to second-degree murder in the death of Simjee, kidnapping Ms Paulus but not resulting in death and robbery. She will serve 35 years behind bars in federal prison, followed by supervised release.
A judge has yet to sign off on the sentence, according to Law & Crime.
The defendant’s friend and co-defendant Krystal Diane Pinkins, 37, from Tennessee, is set for a jury trial on 25 September.
Officers found her at a “base camp” of tents nearby, and when they arrived at that scene her five-year-old son ran out of a tent with a loaded shotgun which he put down when he got to his mother.