Woman charged with kidnapping Columbus babies faces unrelated drug charges here

Credit: Jim Noelker

Credit: Jim Noelker

A Columbus woman charged federally in the December kidnapping of 5-month-old twin boys — including one who was left in the economy lot at the Dayton International Airport — was indicted Wednesday on unrelated local charges.

Nalah T. Jackson, 24, is scheduled to be arraigned April 13 in Montgomery County Common Pleas Court for possession of cocaine and a misdemeanor drug paraphernalia offense.

The indictment was for incidents alleged to have happened on Nov. 3, 2022, in Riverside.

Jackson is charged with two counts of kidnapping of a minor in U.S. District Court in Columbus and is in federal custody.

Between Dec. 19 and Dec. 22, 2022, Jackson kidnapped the two infants and traveled interstate with one of them, according to her federal indictment.

The babies, Kason and Ky’air Thomas, were inside a 2010 Honda Accord stolen while their mother left the car running while she went inside a pizza place to pick up a DoorDash order. This sparked an AMBER Alert and dayslong search for one of the boys and Jackson.

A passenger at the Dayton International Airport found Ky’air outside in the economy lot nearly six hours later, around 4:15 a.m. Dec. 20.

Kason was found Dec. 22 inside the abandoned Accord in Indianapolis while temperatures dropped well below freezing, hours after Jackson was arrested. Kason spent a few days at a children’s hospital, where he received treatment for exposure, but was released in time for Christmas to his family and reunited with his twin brother.

Days before the AMBER Alert was issued Jackson went to a Riverside apartment to try to see her two children who live with their father.

Ky’air Thomas died late Jan. 28 after he was found unresponsive following a seizure. The Franklin County Coroner’s Office ruled it a sudden unexplained infant death that involved an “unsafe sleep environment.”

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