Woman Pleads Guilty to Killing Florida College Student After Attempting to Rob Him in Talladega Forest

The woman shot and killed the man as he'd tried "to defend himself and his girlfriend” after an attempted robbery, per the U.S. Attorney's Office

A woman pleaded guilty to killing a man inside Talladega National Forest after she tried to rob him at gunpoint, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of Alabama.

Yasmine Marie Hider of Edmond, Oklahoma, pleaded guilty to murder, kidnapping and robbery before U.S. District Court R. David Proctor, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a press release on Wednesday.

According to the plea agreement, 21-year-old Hider had flagged down a couple of Florida college students on a road to help her “jump start” a broken car belonging to Krystal Diane Pinkins, who was also at the scene.

The students, who were identified by the Clay County Sheriff's Office to PEOPLE in August as Adam Simjee, 22, and his girlfriend Mikayla Paulus, 20, had been traveling to Cheaha State Park in Clay County, Alabama, at the time, for a hike to see the waterfalls.

However, Hider robbed the pair and eventually shot and killed Simjee as he had “attempted to defend himself and his girlfriend,” per the plea agreement. Simjee was pronounced dead at the scene and Hider was also found injured with four gunshot wounds feet away from his body.

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Hider is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 4, 2024, while her accomplice Pinkins, who was also convicted in federal court last week, has a scheduled sentencing on the same day.

Paulus told WBMA that the couple were heading to Arkansas on a road trip that had been planned for the week before they would attend classes at the University of Central Florida when they came upon a woman, Hider, who appeared to be experiencing car trouble. After the couple worked on the car together for an hour, the vehicle was still inoperable.

"At the end, when nothing could be done, she pulled out a gun and walked [us] into the woods," Paulus told WBMA.

The woman allegedly told the pair to drop their cell phones, Paulus said. That is when "Adam pulled out his gun and told her to get on the ground and that's when she started messing around with her gun. It jammed once but they both shot at each other and she was shot a few times and he was shot only once," Paulus alleged.

The Clay County Sheriff's Office told PEOPLE in a statement in August that Paulus called 911 soon after her boyfriend was shot and told authorities what happened.

Related: Driver Dies After Robbing Bank and Crashing Stolen Car with Toddler Inside

The statement said that responding officers arrived to find Paulus performing CPR on her longtime boyfriend while Hider “was laying on the ground nearby” having “had suffered several gunshots to her torso."

"It was determined that Hider had attempted to rob Simjee and Paulus at gunpoint and was subsequently shot by Simjee who had a handgun concealed on his person," read the statement. "Hider was transported from the scene by ambulance to a nearby landing zone and airlifted to a Birmingham hospital where she underwent surgery for her injuries."

The sheriff's office statement also said that investigators learned that a second "female suspect," later identified as Pinkins, "was present during the robbery and had fled the scene on foot after the shots were fired."

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They located her, along with a boy identified as her son, at "a group of tents that had been set up in the National Forest" about a half a mile from where the robbery took place.

Paulus described her boyfriend to WBMA as an “angel on earth.”

"Everyone who met him loved him," she said. "He was always making jokes and being goofy. Him dying a hero to protect me, like that is just so him."

A GoFundMe campaign was set up to cover Simjee's funeral expenses. An Aug. 17 update to the campaign read, "Now that Adam's funeral and burial costs have been covered, donations will go toward paying for Mikayla's counseling and other expenses as she tries to move forward."

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