DRUG-MULE BOY TELLS OF HORROR

August 16, 2002 -- A 12-year-old drug mule yesterday told a Queens judge
that Nigerian druglords forced him at knife-point to swallow two pounds of
heroin before he boarded a plane to New York last spring in a desperate bid
to reunite with his mother.

"You won't be able to see your mother again," the men told Prince Nnaedozie
Umegbolu when he at first refused to ingest 87 pellets full of narcotics,
according to his testimony.

"They could have blinded me," Umegbolu said in Queens Family Court, where he
is on trial for juvenile drug-possession charges. "They could have killed
me."

Defense lawyer Don Keegan called Umegbolu as his first witness after
agreeing with prosecutors that the boy arrived in New York with a belly full
of heroin on April 10.

Looking like a polished prep-school student in khaki pants, a gold- buttoned
navy blazer and a cobalt blue tie, Umegbolu spoke in a clear, authoritative
voice as his mother, Alissa Walden, looked on.

The boy, an American citizen, told Judge Fran Lubow his troubles began when
he was shipped off to live with his paternal grandparents in Nigeria in 1999
at the request of his father, who is serving time in a federal prison for
using drug mules to smuggle heroin into the United States.

Soon after his arrival in the capital city of Lagos, he wrote to his mother
and maternal grandmother, calling Nigeria "a godforsaken country," and
begged to come home to Atlanta.

His misery worsened when his grandparents shipped him off to a boarding
school.

He was desperate for an escape plan when a group of men approached him last
Easter and offered him a ticket home and $27,000 in exchange for
transporting a package, said the boy. He rejected the money, telling the
men, "I just want to be with my mother."

He said he tried to back out of the deal when he discovered that he had to
swallow his cargo. That's when the men threatened him with the knife.

When he swallowed the plastic pellets too slowly, one of the men "got mad
and started forcing the pellets down my throat until I started gagging,"1/8
he said.

It took him 21/2 hours to swallow the 87 capsules.

He turned himself in to airport cops when a cabby took him to the Brooklyn
address the smugglers had given him, which turned out to be an empty lot.

"I never wanted to proceed with this mission,"1/8 he said.

When he swallowed the plastic pellets too slowly, one of the men "got mad
and started forcing the pellets down my throat until I started gagging," he
said.

It took him 21/2 hours to swallow the 87 capsules.

He turned himself in to airport cops when a cabby took him to the Brooklyn
address the smugglers had given him, which turned out to be an empty lot.

"I never wanted to proceed with this mission," he said.