photo courtesy of TikTok/Screenshot
Two Black Indiana mothers saved a missing Ohio baby and helped capture a kidnapping suspect on December 22.
The women brought home five-month-old Kason Thomas, kidnapped from Columbus last week. The two women, cousins Shyann and Mecka, came across the wanted female perpetrator while attempting to buy children’s toys from her before being alarmed by her strange behavior.
According to News 5, Shyann purchased toys from a woman who went by the alias Mae and during their interactions, she noticed that she acted incredibly odd, so much so that she took a video of the woman. The following day Shyann saw a photo of a suspect wanted in connection to the kidnapping of Kason on the news, and she recognized it immediately as the woman who called herself Mae. She quickly called her grandmother after piecing together her identity.
“I was scrolling on Facebook and saw a mugshot of this girl with… blonde hair, and I’m like, ‘She looks familiar.'”
“I’m like, ‘Grandmother, the lady I told you I seen at the gas station and I bought some stuff from — I think this is the same lady that stole these kids.”
Shyann enlisted the help of her cousin Mecka and asked her if she thought the woman was suspicious, also. They said they could identify her due to “mother’s intuition.”
The Indianapolis police department didn’t take the women seriously at first, so they had to work hard with the police to set up an operation to catch the suspect, whose real name was Nalah Jackson. The operation consisted of the cousins getting the alleged kidnapper into their car under the guise of buying more toys from her and then being pulled over by police. Mecka said as soon as the woman got into the car, they were sure that it was the suspect from television.
“The confirmation was just too crazy,” she said.
“Now, the police know what kind of car we are in, the police know who we got in the car, the police know what to do, they know where our location is,” Mecka added. The police eventually pulled them over and arrested Jackson, and soon after, the cousins returned to where the woman left her car and found Kason inside before flagging down the police.
Kason was discharged from the hospital on December 26.
Kason’s family praised the cousins for their courage in the situation. “Mecka and Shyy — I appreciate you. My family appreciates you,” The young boy’s grandmother said, “What you guys did– it took courage.”