Taken by a Stranger- The Story of Nalani Johnson

Taken by a Stranger- The Story of Nalani Johnson

Her mom had filed a protection order against the little girl’s dad. He had threatened all of their lives and was acting crazy. A judge made him move out of the home they all shared, but still let the father have supervised visits with the little girl. Only a few months later, his daughter ended up missing, but things were not as they appeared.

The story I have for you today is an unusual one. What happened to this little girl was so sudden, and the person who did this to her does not look like the kind of person that you would think would do something so horrible. This is the story of Nalani Johnson.

Nalani Johnson was born on September 15, 2017, to her mother, Gladys Duarte, and her father, Paul Johnson, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She was a sweet and happy baby who was a ball of energy and just so lovable. Nalani was affectionately nicknamed “Moo” by her family.

Nalani’s parents did not remain together very long after she was born, as it seems that Paul, her father, had some anger issues. In fact, Gladys, Nalani’s mother, had filed for a Protection From Abuse (PFA) order in regards to Paul Johnson on April 15, 2019. Gladys filed this paperwork and had Nalani listed on it as the protected person that this was supposed to be for.

In obtaining the protection order, Gladys wrote about how Paul had been acting erratically. Some of the things that Gladys stated Paul had done were very concerning. First, he had tampered with Gladys’s car, which ended up causing an accident. Paul had also ripped all the pictures off of Gladys’s wall when he was forced to move out, as well as took every single item from the fridge and freezer, and stole from her, including some of her shoes and an Xbox.

Even worse than those things is what Paul did next. One time, when he went to pick Gladys up from work, he pulled out a gun, put it to his head, and threatened to kill himself—and this happened while Nalani was in the backseat of the car. Lastly, Gladys wrote how Paul had, on numerous occasions, threatened her life as well as Nalani’s.

Now, the Protection From Abuse order, as I said, was filed on April 15, and it was only a temporary one until it went to court. So, this order of protection was only good for 15 days. Gladys was scheduled to appear in court on April 30 to finalize the protection order; however, she didn’t show up, so the temporary PFA order had expired at that point.

However, after Gladys had filed the initial petition, a judge ordered Paul to get rid of all his weapons. The judge also granted Paul only supervised visits with Nalani going forward.

So, 21-year-old Paul Johnson resided in the Penn Hills area of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. During the summer of 2019, Paul began a romantic relationship with 25-year-old Shireena Nancy. Paul had actually met her on social media.

Now, Shireena was married. She had gotten married the previous year, in 2018, on Valentine’s Day. Her husband was 22-year-old Rahan Uddin, and the couple also had a daughter together. Now, Shireena, her husband, and their daughter had lived in Monroeville, Pennsylvania—that was until Shireena’s husband got deported back to Bangladesh, India.

So, Shireena’s daughter and husband were living over in India, and from time to time she would send them money so they could pay for the bills. But apparently, she was back here just doing her thing, dating whoever she wanted, and I’m assuming her husband had no idea. But now, the money that Shireena would send to her family was money that she had earned working as a rideshare driver for Uber and Lyft.

So, on August 30, 2019, Paul picked up Nalani from her mother’s house so that he could have his visitation time with his daughter. But sadly, this was the last time that Gladys would see her little girl alive.

The following day, on August 31, around 5:00 p.m., Paul, Nalani, and Nalani’s uncle, Justin Rouse, were in a car together, and that car was being driven by Shireena. So, at some point during the ride, Paul and Shireena got into a heated argument over money issues—weird thing to be arguing about since they had just started dating, but all right.

Fuming from the argument, Paul told Shireena to pull the car over because him and Nalani were going to walk back home. So, when they got to the intersection of 11th Street and Clay Drive in Pittsburgh, Shireena did just this. But as Paul got out of the black Toyota Yaris and he turned to get Nalani out of her car seat, suddenly Shireena took off with the little girl still in the car.

Paul had no idea what had just happened. In a state of panic, he tried to call Shireena over and over again, but she wouldn’t pick up. So, instead, he called 911. He reported his daughter as missing and told police that she had been taken by Shireena Nancy in a black Toyota Yaris, which bore Lyft as well as Uber stickers on the front passenger side of the vehicle.

Now, the police took the report of the missing little girl, but for some reason, it took hours to get the Amber Alert out to the public. Once the Amber Alert did go out there, it quickly brought in responses from people who had seen Shireena’s car. She was also captured on surveillance camera at a Sheetz gas station in Murrysville around 5:30 p.m. From the service plaza, according to witnesses, Shireena then traveled east on Route 22.

About an hour after the abduction, a witness saw Shireena’s car in the Indiana County town of Blairsville, near the Chestnut Ridge Resort and Conference Center. And then just a little bit before 7:30 that evening, an officer spotted Shireena’s car and was able to pull her over.

And there was Shireena sitting behind the wheel, but Nalani was nowhere to be seen. They kept asking her where the little girl was, but she acted like she had no idea what they were talking about and refused to give any information.

With the clock ticking during a desperate search to find 2-year-old Nalani Johnson:

“Put the window down.”

This brand-new video shows the moments a Penn Hills police officer pulled over the woman accused of the 2019 kidnapping of Nalani in Penn Hills.

“What’s your name?”

“My name is Shireena.”

“Get out.”

Investigators allege at the time of the traffic stop:

“Okay, step out.”

Two and a half hours had passed since 27-year-old Shireena Nancy kidnapped Nalani before driving her to an Indiana County park off Route 22, leaving the baby girl all alone in the woods, still strapped in her car seat.

“You better tell me right now where that baby’s at!”

“I drive for Uber.”

“Where’s the baby at?”

“What—which baby, officer? You’re making a mis—like, it’s a misunderstanding, I think.”

Police allege Nancy, a Penn Hills woman married to a man in India, became romantically involved with Nalani Johnson’s father, the day of the kidnapping got into a fight with him, kicked him out of her car, and then drove off with his baby.

“Officer, I need to work! Hey, I have a baby, I have my own baby, and I need to send money in the country, officer! It’s a misunderstanding! Why are you arresting me, officer?”

Six minutes into the body cam video:

“Talk anymore, okay? You have the right to remain silent, okay?”

“But officer, it’s not me!”

“I just need to know where that baby is.” Then the 9-minute body cam video ends.

Got a Miranda form, right? Officers about to issue her Miranda rights right here. Shireena Nancy’s defense team wants that video suppressed from evidence, saying police never read her Miranda rights. Prosecutors say the video is admissible because they were trying to track down a missing toddler whose life was in danger. Pittsburgh’s Action News 4 was told the judge has not decided yet whether to suppress the body cam video from evidence in the pre-trial motion.

Shireena was taken into custody on suspicion of kidnapping, and since she wasn’t giving any useful information to the police, police were now asking the public to keep an eye out for Nalani’s car seat, since her car seat was also missing from Shireena’s car. Nalani’s child car seat was described as a black and gray Evenflo Maestro Sport harness booster seat.

Shireena Nancy was then charged with kidnapping, interference with the custody of a child, and concealment as to the whereabouts of a child. She was booked into Allegheny County Jail.

When the investigators began questioning Shireena, she told them that this was all Paul’s doing. In fact, she claimed that Paul had asked her to drive 20 minutes away to a gas station in Monroeville along Route 22. She said that Paul had sold the little girl to an unnamed individual for $10,000; she was just doing the transfer of Nalani—Paul was the one who was the bad guy.

Shireena told police that once she had arrived at the set meeting spot, she was flagged down by a woman in a silver SUV, and this SUV had an out-of-state license plate on it. She also said that the name of the state on the license plate had been written in cursive, but she couldn’t remember which state it was.

She told investigators that the SUV was parked on the berm of the road with its hazard lights on. A Black female was standing outside of the SUV, and she said a second woman was sitting inside. So, she gave up Nalani and Nalani’s car seat to these two mysterious women and drove toward the nearby town of Blairsville. However, police found no evidence of the SUV that she was talking about.

Paul’s family—the Johnson family—as well as law enforcement officials heavily disputed this version of events.

So, after this encounter, Shireena then says that she drove back towards Penn County, and at that time she smoked a cigarette and called her husband. According to Shireena’s husband, Rahan, Shireena had been driving for either Uber or Lyft that night. Though both Uber and Lyft came out and made statements and said that she had not accepted any rides and therefore was not working on either one of their platforms that night.

So Shireena’s husband said that he had spoken with her around 7:00 p.m. just as she was finishing up her rideshare shift, is what she told him. But at no time during the call did Shireena mention anything about transporting a child anywhere.

So Shireena and her husband had a video call, and Rahan says that she took the cell phone and put it up on the dashboard in the middle of their call, so he was able to see the entire car. He says there was no child and no car seat to be seen. After a little while, however, he said the video cut out and it went to audio-only, like she had taken it off, but he was still able to hear everything on the other end.

Rahan says at that point he heard some type of altercation on his wife’s end of the phone. What he actually heard was police arresting Shireena. She told her husband that police had a gun pointed at her and were asking her to get out of the vehicle, and I believe that ended the call.

Police had figured out that Shireena traveled near the Chestnut Ridge Resort that Saturday evening that she had abducted Nalani. Now, police knew that there was a park with lots of wooded areas nearby, so they made the decision to search that area.

So, on September 3, 2019, there was a very large police presence at Pine Ridge Park in Blairsville, Pennsylvania. Police had actually sectioned off a large area of the park, including a wooded area. And by now, the FBI had also gotten involved in Nalani’s kidnapping, and they were checking every vehicle that was going in and out of the park that day.

Searchers used dogs, drones, and helicopters to aid in the search for Nalani. And then they found what they had been looking for. It was Nalani. Her lifeless little body was still wearing the same clothes that she had been wearing on the day of her abduction, and she was still strapped into her car seat.

Police called the coroner to the scene, and it was noted that Nalani’s body had no visible injuries. Shortly after Nalani was discovered, complete strangers showed up to lay flowers and created a makeshift memorial for the little girl.

On October 23, 2019, an autopsy of the little girl’s body was done to determine her cause of death. Once it was complete, the Indiana County coroner’s office ruled her death a homicide and said that it was consistent with suffocation. The coroner also said that Nalani had been deceased by the time she was left at the park.

Two days later, on October 25, additional charges were filed against Shireena. She was then charged with homicide as well as abuse of a corpse.

On April 1, 2022, just weeks before Shireena’s trial was set to start, she took a plea deal. As part of the plea agreement, prosecutors removed the charges of interference with the custody of a child, concealment of a child, and abuse of a corpse. Shireena pled guilty to third-degree murder as well as kidnapping. She was sentenced to 15 to 30 years in jail. Yeah, that’s it—just 15 to 30.

She also received credit for the two and a half years that she had already spent behind bars, so it looks like she could be out in about 12 years from now at the earliest. Good, she’ll still be young enough to go and do something horrible like this again.

More than 20 of Nalani’s family members and other supporters were in court for the plea, many weeping as prosecutors reviewed the facts of the case, and none of them could understand how Shireena, as a mother herself, could have done this and for what reason.

Nalani’s family, along with other concerned parents and community members, banded together to support the passing of House Bill 509, or the Nalani Johnson Rule. The goal of this bill is to change the Amber Alert system in Pennsylvania so that this sort of tragedy does not happen again. It would amend the Amber Alert law and require the Missing Endangered Person Advisory system to be activated immediately when a child is reported as missing by a parent or family member. Police said that the Amber Alert in Nalani’s case had not been sent out for hours afterwards because of the strict guidelines that police had to follow.

On September 7, 2019, the visitation and funeral services for Nalani Johnson were held at Mount Ararat Baptist Church. And on both September 16, 2020 and 2021, family and friends gathered together for birthday celebrations for what would have been Nalani’s third and fourth birthdays. They had cake, ice cream, balloons, and there were many people who wore shirts all with Nalani’s picture on them during the celebration.

On what would have been Nalani’s fourth birthday, her grandmother, Taja Walsh, said about her:

“Nalani was a rambunctious, very headstrong little girl, and she loved on everybody. She was just an awesome, awesome little girl. We miss her something terrible. Although she is not here in body, I know she is here in spirit. We try to keep the memories that we have of her alive and going.”

The group then sang “Happy Birthday” before releasing balloons into the sky in honor of Nalani.

Well, thank you for listening to all of Nalani’s story today. What happened to this little girl was just heartbreaking. And why did Shireena do it? Just to get back at Paul for a little fight? That sounds like the most petty thing that I’ve ever heard of, but I can think of no other motive. And had the Amber Alert gone out sooner, maybe sweet little adorable Nalani would still be alive. Hopefully that system gets amended soon, but it does not look like the bill has yet been passed that Nalani’s family members were pushing for.