COLUMBUS – A Columbus woman pleaded guilty in federal court Wednesday to abducting twin 5-month-old boys from a Columbus pizza restaurant and fleeing with them to Dayton and Indiana in 2022.
Nalah Jackson, 25, pleaded guilty to two counts of kidnapping a minor in a plea agreement that included serving a sentence of 20 years in prison, according to a release from the office of U.S. Attorney Kenneth Parker.
“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,” Parker said.
The abduction case prompted an Amber Alert and the search for the infants captured the attention of central Ohioans for four days in December 2022 as Jackson abandoned one of the children in Dayton and the other in Indianapolis to be found by passers-bay and law enforcement officials.
According to court documents, Jackson walked out of Donatos Pizza on N. High Street in close to 10:00 p.m. on the night of Dec. 19 and drove away in a black Honda Accord that had been left running in the parking lot. The twin five-month-old infants were buckled in the back seat while their mother was inside the restaurant picking up a delivery order.
Over the next several hours, Jackson drove from Columbus to Dayton and to various other locations in central and western Ohio, finally arriving at the Dayton International Airport, where she left one of the infants in the parking lot. A passerby parking their vehicle saw the baby in his car seat wrapped in a quilt between two vehicles and alerted security.
Crossing state lines
After Jackson left the Dayton airport parking lot at high speeds at approximately 4:00 a.m. on Dec. 20, she traveled to Indianapolis with the second baby still in the vehicle.
She abandoned the second baby strapped in his car seat in the back seat of the car at a Papa Johns pizza restaurant near the city’s university district where the child remained strapped in the car seat for the next two-and-a-half-days while family members, concerned citizens and law enforcement officers continued to search for him.
A woman encountered Jackson selling stolen merchandise outside of a local gas station later that day and gave her a ride to a nearby shopping plaza.
Another alert citizen
That night, the woman noticed several social media posts regarding the kidnapping and recognized Jackson as the alleged kidnapper. She called her cousin, and together they formulated a plan to meet up with Jackson to confirm her identity, recover the infant if possible, and lead Jackson to law enforcement.
On Dec. 22, the women met up with Jackson, whom they traced to a local residence through a phone number Jackson had previously used to call one of them. The women confirmed that Jackson was the same person identified as the kidnapping suspect and drove her to several shopping centers in Indianapolis, all-the-while surreptitiously attempting to contact law enforcement in Columbus and Indianapolis.
Eventually, one of the women was able to route local law enforcement to their vehicle and they tried to signal to Indianapolis police that Jackson was the kidnapping suspect.
Jackson provided a false name and another individual’s identification card to the officers, who confirmed her identity and arrested her for kidnapping.
The second child found
The two women decided to continue searching for the missing infant and found a bus schedule that Jackson left behind in the backseat of their vehicle and decided to focus their search on a bus route near the university district.
With driving conditions worsening quickly due to an impending snowstorm, the women decided to get something to eat before heading home. As they were pulling into a Blaze Pizza, they noticed a black Honda Accord at the nearby Papa Johns and noticed snow had already accumulated on the car.
The women opened the driver’s side door and a smell coming from the car and the silence of the baby prompted one of the women one of the women to scream, assuming the baby was dead. The scream woke the baby up and the women found some Indianapolis officers on their lunch break inside the restaurant.
Police took custody of the baby and took him to a local hospital where he was treated for dehydration, heart abnormalities due to the dehydration and extreme diaper rash and skin deterioration due to him being buckled in a car seat for three days.