Outside, Mitten circulated through the crowd, while news copters hovered overhead. A bomb squad entered to inspect Leong’s satchel—which it ultimately determined to be harmless.

Leong was escorted to waiting police cars and taken to Cambridge District Court, where he plead “not guilty” to charges of making a false bomb threat, disorderly conduct and trespassing. After initially waiving his right to a court-appointed attorney, Leong was committed to the state-run Lindemann Mental Health Center for a 20-day stay to evaluate his competency to stand trial.

On Feb. 3, most of the class’s students filed back into lecture halls—this time in Emerson Hall and under police protection—to make a second go at the exam, while a small number opted for a take-home exam intended for those too traumatized to take the in-class test.

The public record of Leong’s next few months is sparse, and the paper trail vanishes completely before that spring’s Commencement exercises.

According to Cambridge Public Defender David G. Twohig, who represented the defendant, mental health professionals initially deemed Leong not competent to stand trial, meaning he couldn’t understand the charges against him. At an initial hearing, Leong stated he had been off his medication, and a motion filed by Twohig described him as suffering from chronic paranoid schizophrenia.

But while at Lindemann, Twohig says his client improved. “He was there, got on his medications and reached whatever baseline he could,” Twohig says. “In that setting he seemed like a nice person. He was very troubled but was doing well in the structured environment.” The result of his improvement was that he was deemed competent to be tried, and his case moved forward.

Prosecutors had in the meantime downgraded the most severe charge against Leong—from making false bomb threats to making threats to commit a crime.

Then, sometime in the spring, Leong walked out of Lindemann. While technically a “locked Department of Mental Health facility,” Lindemann is at root a hospital—unlike other state facilities, it is not located within prison walls. Several involved with the criminal justice system say “escape” from the facility is not uncommon.

The next either Twohig or the court heard of him, Leong was in New York, at the Bellevue State Psychiatric Hospital. Court papers show no great rush to bring Leong back to prosecute him, but according to Twohig he eventually landed back in custody at Lindemann, and a date for a jury trial was set.

The final entry in Leong’s relatively thin case file comes abruptly, less than half a year after he was arrested. It’s a nolle prosequi filing by prosecutors, an order announcing their decision to suspend prosecution. According to Twohig, the Commonwealth’s decision is a common one for situations in which the defendant is “clearly delusional” and the remaining charges are minor.

Following the decision not to prosecute, the only thing holding Leong at Lindemann was a set of civil commitment papers. According to Twohig, Leong formally signed himself in when he was sent to Lindemann for the second time, meaning that he could file a request to leave the center at any time with three days notice. During the three-day period, Lindemann could decide whether to file a civil action to commit Leong against his will.

Confidentiality rules forbid Lindemann from confirming whether Leong is still a patient there, but Twohig thinks it is unlikely. “He was probably let out a month or two later and disappeared into the woodwork.”

Mitten says he harbors no ill feelings towards the man who disrupted his final, though his sympathy lies elsewhere. “While I really feel sorry for the poor disturbed man, I felt and feel even sorrier for all the students who were put in fear of their lives,” Mitten says. The professor recognizes in the scare a lesson that is even sharper in a post-Sept. 11 world: “It makes one realize how vulnerable we are to crazy individuals like this and to terrorism in our open urban university community.”

OCS Counselor Led Officers on Chase

It was a late October afternoon in leafy Brookline, and a routine traffic stop was about to turn into a scene from “Cops.” According to Brookline police, the driver of a white Subaru was doing 70 in a 30 MPH zone and failed to stop when instructed to pull over.