A con woman agreed to a plea deal Monday in exchange for three decades in prison for fatally shooting a Florida college student in front of his horrified girlfriend after they stopped to help her.
Yasmine Hidinger will be required to enter a guilty pleading to murder, kidnapping, and robbery at the federal court of Alabama for the August 14, 2022 attack against Adam Simjee and Mikayla Paulus. A judge must still approve the agreement.
Paulus wrote an emotional tribute to Simjee shortly before Hider made the deal on the anniversary of his murder.
She wrote: “This is just the beginning of many years without him.” “But I see him all around me.” “I think of him constantly. ”
The tragic shooting unfolded after Hider flagged down the University of Central Florida students, who had been driving through Alabama’s Cheaha State Park looking for waterfalls.
Hider told the couple she had broken down in her XB Scion an eighth mile from them and asked for their help.
Hider drove the car, and his students attempted to jumpstart it with jumper cables.
Paulus called his father, who is a mechanic. They didn’t know that their Scion broke down weeks earlier, and it was all a trick.
According to the plea deal, Hider pulled a gun out and told the two “to empty their pockets and walk deeper in the woods.”
“Everything we have is in the van. You can have it,” Simjee told her before pulling a pistol from his waistband and ordering her to drop her weapon.
Are You Serious? Hider responded and opened fire. Hider and Simjee both suffered injuries during the subsequent gunfight.
“Why did you shoot me?” asked Hider, who was slumped against a fallen pine tree with three gunshot wounds to her abdomen and one to her leg. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
Krystal Pinkins, Hider’s alleged accomplice, briefly emerged from a forest before fleeing.
Paulus tried desperately to save Simjee after he was hit in the abdomen.
Paulus started chest compressions when Simjee became unconscious. Simjee stopped breathing but was still alive.
Near the crime scene, the suspects lived “off-grid”. The suspects allegedly had connections with Rashad Jamal White, who is a cult leader.
Documents from the court indicate that investigators tracked Pinkins to a base camp of tents. Pinkins’s five-year-old son was running through the woods with an unloaded firearm. Pinkins, who was then arrested, was the one to put the gun down.
She allegedly told FBI agents that she’d given the gun to Hider. They had tried the same ploy on an older woman the day before, but their target refused to follow them to the car, Pinkins allegedly said.
Her case is still pending.
