Pubdate: Sat, 13 Apr 2002
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution (GA)
Copyright: 2002 Cox Interactive Media.
Contact:  http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/28
Author: JOSHUA B. GOOD

HOMESICK BOY WHO WAS LIVING IN AFRICA RISKED DEATH AS HEROIN 'MULE' TO 
RETURN TO MOM

After two years in Nigeria, 12-year-old Prince Nnaedozie Umegbolu was 
desperate to see his mother in Atlanta.

So desperate, he said, he agreed to become a "drug mule," a smuggler who is 
paid to swallow condoms filled with drugs. Before leaving Nigeria a few 
days ago, Prince swallowed 87 heroin-filled condoms in exchange for airfare 
and $1,900.

His mother, Alissa Walden of Norcross, said her son's desperation made him 
a perfect target for Lagos drug dealers looking to smuggle high-grade 
heroin into the United States.

"He is a child, they used him," said Walden, who was packing frantically 
Friday to head to New York, where her son was hospitalized and under arrest 
as a juvenile for drug possession.

Walden hopes to see her son today in his hospital room, which is guarded by 
two police officers.

Prince swallowed the heroin-filled condoms a few days before beginning his 
17-hour trip to New York, said Walden, who spoke to her son by telephone 
Thursday. He was to deliver the drugs to a contact after arriving, but 
things went wrong and the boy ended up under arrest. Walden said she did 
not know of her son's plan until he phoned her from the hospital.

"He told me, 'Mom, I want to be reunited with my family,' " Walden, 33, 
said. "But I didn't have the money to get him."

The federal Drug Enforcement Agency has a term for drug mules such as 
Prince. They call them swallowers. John Andrejko, the DEA chief in Atlanta, 
said smuggling rings often use children.

But in 33 years with the DEA, Andrejko said, he has never seen a swallower 
as young as Prince. "But it doesn't surprise me in this day and age," 
Andrejko said.

Andrejko, who headed the African DEA office in Egypt in 1982, said 
Nigerians have became notorious middlemen for the heroin trade, supplying 
mules to move the drug into Europe and America. The heroin that goes 
through Nigeria is high-grade, from Laos and Thailand, Andrejko said.

"International drug trafficking has reached a new low of degradation for 
exploiting a 12-year-old boy," said Queens District Attorney Richard Brown, 
whose office participated in the investigation.

"The true criminals in this terrible and tragic case are the cold-hearted 
and greedy dealers of death who risk a child's life in the relentless quest 
for dirty money," Brown said.

Walden had sent her son to live with his paternal grandparents in Abuja, 
the Nigerian capital, so he could get to know them and attend school in 
Africa. But Prince, the oldest of five children, hated Nigeria. He missed 
his three brothers and his sister.

She said he cried on the phone from his hospital bed as he told her how 
drug dealers had approached him at a school choir performance. The boy said 
the dealers complimented him on his singing and asked whether he was American.

Slowly the men gained Prince's trust, his mother said. Earlier this week, 
they took him behind a house in Lagos and had him swallow the condoms, 
Walden said. She wasn't certain what day that was. Prince was to get 
airfare -- worth about $2,800 -- and $1,900 in cash, she said.

Walden called Prince's grandfather in Lagos on Thursday night to find out 
what had happened. He told her Prince had left for school and disappeared.

"But he was on Easter break, he wouldn't go to school," she said. The 
grandfather told her Prince had left a note and taken his passport. Walden 
said she ended the conversation without telling the grandfather that Prince 
was in America.

"He is never going back to Nigeria," Walden said as she prepared to leave 
her clean, modest home in a poor Norcross neighborhood.

Doctors said Prince was lucky to be alive. By noon Friday, he had passed 
all but three condoms, his mother said.

There are two ways people who swallow packed drugs can die, said Dr. Robert 
Geller, director of the Georgia Poison Center.

If the balloon or condom breaks, massive amounts of heroin enter the system 
all at once. "It can be an instant death," Geller said, even if the patient 
is in a hospital emergency room at the time.

The other way to die is if the bags of drugs block the intestines. In those 
cases, doctors must operate, Geller said.

The likelihood of the balloons or condoms' breaking depends on the 
thickness of the latex, how long stomach acid has worked on them and how 
much churning the stomach does, Geller said.

Because it is unclear when Prince swallowed the condoms, his stomach acid 
could have been working on them for days. The condoms were in his system at 
least 17 hours by the time he got off a British Airways plane at 10:43 p.m. 
Wednesday. Prince cleared customs without a hitch and caught a cab to 
Brooklyn, said Steve Coleman, spokesman for the Port Authority of New 
York-New Jersey, which provides police for New York's airports.

When Prince got to what was supposed to be a Brooklyn delivery address, no 
one was there, Coleman said. The boy called his drug contact in Nigeria and 
was told to meet a woman at LaGuardia Airport.

But the pounds of heroin in his belly began to cause problems. On the way 
to LaGuardia, Prince began to bleed. He asked the cabbie to stop; he had to 
go to the bathroom.

When he came back to the cab, he was holding a tube sock, which contained 
40 condoms the boy had passed. Cabbie Ronald Manning didn't know what was 
in the sock, but he began to suspect something was wrong.

At the airport, there was no one for the boy to meet. Manning stopped and 
asked two police officers what to do. They told him to take Prince to the 
Port Authority police office.

"The kid gets real uptight," Manning told Newsday. "He said, 'We really 
don't have to go to the police.' "

"Are you a runaway?" Manning asked Prince.

Prince confessed to Manning and showed the cabdriver the tube sock, Coleman 
said.

In 1994, when Prince was very young, DEA agents arrested his father in 
Atlanta in connection with a heroin-smuggling operation. Chukwunwieke 
Umegbolu was sentenced to 10 years and is now in a federal prison in Virginia.

Walden said she divorced her husband before he was arrested and didn't know 
of his involvement with drugs.

But she doesn't believe her son was trying to follow in his father's 
footsteps. "He was just a baby when his dad was arrested," she said.
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