An Ohio woman is facing 20 years in jail after she admitted to kidnapping twin babies by driving away in their mother’s car, before abandoning them both in different parts of the state.
Nalah T. Jackson, 25, from Columbus, pleaded guilty to two counts of kidnapping, for stealing a black Honda Accord that had been left running while the twin boys — Kason and Ky’air Thomas, then just five months — were buckled up in the back seat in 2022.
Ky’air died from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome one month after being found, in an unrelated incident related to being left in a “unsafe sleep environment,” on an adult bed with excess bedding and pillows, a coroner’s report said.
The case sparked a huge police operation across Ohio and five neighboring states, with the FBI and Ohio State Highway Patrol assisting.
“This community watched in horror as Nalah Jackson preyed on two vulnerable babies. Today, she admitted her crime and agreed to spend 20 years in prison for her actions,” U.S. Attorney Kenneth L. Parker said in a statement on Wednesday.
At about 10 p.m. on Dec. 19, 2022, Jackson walked out of a pizza restaurant in Columbus and took the car as the boys’ mother was in the same restaurant picking up a takeaway order.
Jackson drove to several locations across western Ohio for the next few hours, the attorney’s office said, before she arrived at Dayton International Airport close to 3 a.m. the next morning.
She went inside the airport, then appeared to forget where she’d left the car, attempted to hire an Uber to try to find it, before eventually returning and driving off at high speed toward Indianapolis with just one of the babies in the car.
She had left Ky’air in the parking lot, still in his car seat, where he was found between two cars at about 4 a.m. by a passerby, the attorney’s statement said.
Jackson arrived in Indianapolis at 8 a.m. and parked outside a Papa John’s in the city’s university district, where she abandoned the car with baby Kason inside. While the…
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