Tourist teen recalls kidnapping from Michael Jackson home

Yahoo

07-05-2025

A teen girl, 17, testified Tuesday that she and her father weren't at the Michael Jackson Childhood Home in Gary long before a man walked up from behind and stuck a gun at her side.
Throughout the hours-long ordeal on Aug. 9, then 16, she said she was motivated to remain calm and stay alive. She and her father had been on a road trip, visiting prestigious colleges in the eastern U.S. and Midwest.
That day, they planned to head to Notre Dame from Chicago. With an interest in aerospace, she wanted to be an engineer.
'There's no one else,' she said. 'It's up to me.'
Oasia Barnes, 69, of Gary, is on trial this week. He is accused of kidnapping the two from the Michael Jackson home, taking them near an abandoned home, separating the girl and forcing her to perform a sex act in an overgrown field.
He is charged with several felonies, including Level 1 felony rape. He has denied the accusations and pleaded not guilty.
Indiana court and prison records show he is a convicted serial rapist, dating back to the 1970s and was released from a 1985 Gary rape sentence in March 2024.
The father, from New York, testified he was a Michael Jackson fan, but didn't know much about Gary. The city, originally built for workers at U.S. Steel, has about 70,000 residents with around 50 murders a year and is plagued by at least 10,000 abandoned buildings.
He assumed they would walk inside the home — which is typically locked.
He plugged the address into a phone.
The Post-Tribune asked Gary Mayor Eddie Melton's office what has been done since the incident to help protect tourists' safety when they stop and visit the property.
'We want to emphasize that this was an isolated incident, and we have not seen any further issues in the area since that time,' Gary Police Chief Derrick Cannon said in an email through a mayor's office spokeswoman.
Cameras at the home are connected to Gary Police's Real Time Crime Center — launched in 2023, planted at places like gas stations, libraries and McDonalds — that allow officers to pull video surveillance nearly instantaneously. Gary Police works with the Jackson family, residents, businesses to make sure it is covered with footage, he said.
'(W)e were able to leverage this technology, along with tips from the community, to rapidly locate and arrest the suspect within hours. We thank our partners at the FBI and Lake County Sheriff's Office for their valuable partnership in this effort,' he wrote.
The city is also encouraging residents to put video camera doorbells on their homes. A man called 911 after his cell phone got an alert from a camera system that three people were in the back of his property on the 2200 block of Washington Street address — where the girl was found.
At the Michael Jackson home, there were at first maybe a dozen people, including a large Hispanic family, the father said. Barnes passed the man and his daughter briefly, saying, 'don't forget your glove.'
'I didn't think anything of it,' he said.
Minutes later, as he was taking pictures of plaques, Barnes approached the girl from behind with a gun, threatening to shoot her.
'You're just baffled,' the man said. 'It caught me off-guard, frankly.'
The gunman, who he identified as Barnes in court, was 'very calm.'
He gave Barnes a couple hundred dollars in cash, thinking it was just a robbery. When Barnes ordered him to give up his phone, the man handed it to his daughter.
On the way to his rental car, the man told the Hispanic family in Spanish that Barnes had a gun and to 'call the cops,' he said.
The man told Barnes to take the car. Barnes ordered them inside, saying he needed a ride. The girl sat on Barnes' lap in the backseat. As he gave the man directions, it was 'not looking good' as the area turned increasingly run-down, the father said.
Telling him to park near an overgrown alley with garbage, Barnes took the girl out of the car.
'I'm going to borrow her,' the man recalled Barnes saying.
'That's when I realized it was something like..rape,' the man said.
He continued to plead with him not to hurt her, then considered trying to run the man down, but didn't want to hurt his daughter. Later, Barnes returned, asking if she was a virgin.
'I won't do her like that,' Barnes said, the man recalled.
The man tried to hit the car's OnStar button for help, but it didn't work.
'I have to do something,' he said. 'This is like my last stand.'
The father went into the garage and the abandoned home where they disappeared, finding nothing. Coming out, he was 'hysterical.'
The man ran to Maryland Street, where he saw a woman coming home with groceries. He knocked on the door. The woman who answered called 911 for him.
On cross-examination with defense lawyer Robert Varga, the man said he did not personally witness his daughter being assaulted.
Gary Police told him they did not appear to be on the cameras at the Jackson home, he said. The man said he was 'baffled,' noting they had pictures and a selfie — the latter was shown in court.
In detailed testimony, the teen recalled what happened.
As her dad was ordered to get the car, still at the Jackson home, the assailant — who she also identified as Barnes — told her to touch his genitals over his clothes. Once in the car, he forced her to sit on his lap, then touched her breasts.
'I was very scared,' she said.
In the car, she told him she was a virgin. When they got to the overgrown field, he told her to kiss him, then forced her to perform the sex act.
'It was horrifying,' she said. 'It was disgusting.'
At that moment, she dropped the two phones she was carrying in the field. Realistically, there was no way she could have safely called 911, she said.
Later, they walked toward Broadway Avenue. He told the girl to hold his hand and pretend she was his girlfriend. He talked briefly to three people he appeared to know. How long are you going to keep me, she later asks. Six months, Barnes replied.
'I'm telling (him) I can't do this,' she told Deputy Prosecutor Tara Villarreal. 'I have to go to school.'
When they started to hear police helicopters, Barnes took her to Washington Street. She said she was hungry. He texted another man to come over, who took their order and returned later with food.
Barnes fondled the girl behind the home, she said. She continued to talk to him, hoping it would distract him.
'I have things I'm passionate about, I want to pursue,' she said. 'I need to keep myself alive.'
By then, in a city she didn't know, the girl was considering her options. Right at the time she thought it might be best to make a run, a police officer showed.
The trial continues this week.
Gary residents can report crime to a police in a Text-to-Tip line at 219-207-8477.