Baby at center of Amber Alert found in car after 2 days; woman arrested
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Richard El and Shawn Anderson, officers with the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, spent Thursday looking for a stolen black 2010 Honda Accord driven by Nalah Jackson.
Police believed that 5-month-old Kason Thomass was in the back seat of the car.
Investigators say that Jackson stole the car Monday in Columbus, Ohio when the owner left the vehicle running outside of a pizza place with her 5-month-old twin boys in the backseat.
Late Thursday afternoon, the IMPD officers stopped to eat at a shopping plaza near West 10th Street and University Boulevard.
Anderson said, “We stopped to decompress and talk about the day and what happen to Kason so as parents we understand. It was time for us to decompress because we were disappointed that we could not find him and then God opened up the heavens to us and almost took him and put him right in our hands.”
The car they had been looking for was sitting right in front of Papa John’s Pizza, right across the parking lot from where the officers stopped to eat.
“Basically, it happened totally unexpectedly and we located him,” Anderson said.
Jason Vannort works for Papa John’s and he had noticed the car sitting in front of the store for a couple of days. He told me he parked his own car next to it but that abandoned cars are fairly common in the area and he didn’t think twice about it.
Then the cops showed up and surrounded the car.
“Fortunately, they found a baby in the car that had been sitting there for a few days thank god he was OK,” Vannort said.
Vannort says Jackson came into the store and asked about a job. “She came in Tuesday morning probably around 8 o’clock and was asking about bus passes and asking if we were hiring. I didn’t think too much about it. She was here for about 20 minutes and left and walked right past the car, and I didn’t see her again.”
Police arrested Jackson on Thursday afternoon, but she didn’t offer much information on the boy’s location. Police found Kason just as the weather was getting nasty. He had been alone for two days, with nothing to eat or drink.
“Having 23 years in law enforcement, these are the moments that I live for. … This is why I get out of bed every day and put this uniform on,” Anderson said.
Jackson is expected to face charges in Ohio and federal charges for taking the 5-month-old boy across state lines.