Hyde Park student faces gun charges

A student at Hyde Park's Social Justice Academy was arrested yesterday morning after allegedly trying to sneak a handgun loaded with five hollow point bullets into the school at the beginning of classes, police officials said.

Osemedua Ude Jr., 18, a senior who transferred from English High School in Jamaica Plain at the end of the last school year, was charged in West Roxbury District Court with unlawfully carrying a firearm, possession of a firearm or ammunition without a Firearms Identification Card, carrying a loaded handgun, and disorderly conduct, and was ordered held on $10,000 cash bail. He pleaded not guilty and is scheduled for a pretrial hearing on Feb. 23.

"We are still investigating, but we do not believe that he intended to use the gun in the school," said Jim McIntyre, the chief operating officer for Boston Public Schools. The Social Justice Academy is one of four schools located in the former Hyde Park High School.

Ude got only as far as the foyer of the school, where students are required to place their bags on a security table for inspection and walk through a metal detector, authorities said. Moments after he put his black backpack on the table at 7:40 a.m., a school administrator who had opened the bag and felt the contents yelled "gun" to a nearby Boston School Police officer, police said. Ude then grabbed his backpack from the administrator and ran outside, but was pursued by the police officer.

During a 20-minute chase, Ude, of Mattapan, tried to elude several officers by running through backyards and several adjacent streets, but he was caught inside an apartment at Huntington and River streets, less than a half-mile from the school. During the chase, Ude allegedly dumped the backpack, leading to an extensive search for it by Boston police, cadets from the Boston Police Academy, and several K-9 units. At 11:15 a.m., a police cadet found the backpack stashed inside a red tool box at a house on Lexington Avenue.

Inside the bag, police found a loaded silver .357 handgun. Hollow point bullets are designed to cause more damage to soft tissue by "mushrooming" upon impact, authorities said.

As students walked out of the large sand-colored Hyde Park Educational Complex, which houses the academy and three other separate high schools, some stopped and talked about the incident. One 17-year-old junior said Ude was in her class and she described him as a good student who got along with classmates as well as their teacher. "I was really surprised that he did something like that," said the girl. "He is just so nice to everyone."

Some students at the Social Justice Academy thought Ude carried the gun for his own protection outside of school and did not intend to use it against anyone in school, said a senior who has a humanities class with the boy.

McIntyre said the number of incidents of students bringing firearms into the complex has dropped since the 2002 school year. This is the third incident this year, compared with six last year, seven during the 2004-2005 school year, and five in the 2003-2004 year, he said.

"This is an indication that the protocols and training that we implemented to make our schools safer is paying off," he said.