AL: ACCUSED KIDNAPPER PREVIOUSLY CHARGED IN 2021
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FAIRFIELD, Alabama (WVTM) — Nearly five years have passed since Brionna Washington watched police place her 4-day-old son back into her arms after he was kidnapped from their Fairfield home.
Her son, Kamarion Taylor, is now a healthy, energetic boy. But Washington still remembers the fear of those hours when she did not know where he was, or whether she would ever see him again.
“I just couldn’t stop crying, like it was just so much running through my head about it,” Washington said. “I just kept thinking I wouldn’t get my baby back. I wasn’t going to see him again. I don’t know where this lady’s at, what she’s doing, none of that.”
Now, Washington says those memories have come rushing back.
The woman charged in Kamarion’s 2021 kidnapping, Lakesha Brown, has been arrested in Atlanta and accused of abducting two more children.
Atlanta police released body camera video Tuesday showing officers recovering two young girls from a hot trailer.
Brown, who had been caring for the girls as a babysitter, is charged with abducting the sisters, ages 4 years and 11 months.
For Washington, the allegations were difficult to comprehend.
“Everybody just kept calling my phone saying, you know she out of jail, you know she took somebody else’s kids,” Washington said. “And I’m like, she took kids? They say she took two. And then I started seeing it on Facebook. I just started seeing it everywhere.”
Brown also faces charges in Jefferson County in connection with Kamarion’s disappearance in 2021.
Brown was a family friend when, according to police, she took Washington’s newborn son from his Fairfield home.
Kamarion was only 4 days old.
For about seven hours, Washington waited, cried and feared the worst as police searched for him.
Officers eventually tracked down Brown and the baby. WVTM 13 video from that day captured Washington’s emotional reunion with her son.
Years later, she says she still does not take that moment — or her son’s safety — for granted.
Washington said the Atlanta girls’ mother has since reached out to her.
The two women have spoken about experiences few parents can fully understand: the terror of not knowing where their children are and the relief of finally getting them back.
“She said when she got them back all she could do was just smile and just watch them sleep,” Washington said.
Washington said their conversations also revealed similarities in how Brown allegedly entered their lives.
She said Brown appeared to gain the trust of both families before being accused of taking their children.
Washington said she did not know Brown had been released on bond in the Jefferson County case until she unexpectedly saw her at a Walmart about a year ago.
She said no one from Jefferson County notified her of Brown’s release.
Now, after the allegations in Atlanta, Washington is questioning why Brown was free while the 2021 kidnapping case remained unresolved.
“This time, they don’t need to let her out,” Washington said. “Because there ain’t no way y’all keep letting her out and she keep doing the same thing. Like it’s going to be a constant, she’s going to keep doing it.”
Washington also said she believes Brown needs mental health treatment.
“I think she needs mental help,” Washington said. “Because ain’t no way you keep taking people’s kids.”
She also questioned how Brown was allegedly able to present herself online as a babysitter, saying someone facing a kidnapping charge should not have been in groups where parents were searching for child care.
Washington said her frustration extends beyond Brown’s release.
She said Jefferson County authorities have not kept her informed about the status of the kidnapping case involving her son, and she still does not understand why it has taken years for the case to reach trial.
Brown’s Jefferson County trial was scheduled to begin in May, but she did not appear in court.
For Washington, the newest accusations are no longer only about what happened to her family five years ago.
They are about another mother who experienced the same fear — and what Washington says must happen before another family goes through it.
She wants Brown kept off the streets while the cases against her move forward.
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