A 14-year-old Texas boy was arrested on Monday after he brought a homemade clock to school.
According to The Dallas Morning News, Ahmed Mohamed was suspended for three days and questioned by police after a teacher at MacArthur High School in Irving said Mohamed’s invention looked like a bomb.
The Muslim teen built the digital clock, made up of a circuit board, power supply and a digital display, in about 20 minutes just before going to bed on Sunday night, the Morning News reported.
Upon arriving to school the next morning, Mohamed showed his engineering teacher his little invention.
“He was like, ‘That’s really nice,’” Mohamed told the newspaper. “‘I would advise you not to show any other teachers.’”
Mohamed’s English teacher spotted the clock after it beeped during class.
“She was like, it looks like a bomb,” the young inventor told the newspaper. “I told her, ‘It doesn’t look like a bomb to me.’”
The teenager was escorted to the principal’s office where his belongings were searched and the student was questioned by several police officers.
“They were like, ‘So you tried to make a bomb?’” Mohamed told the News. “I told them no, I was trying to make a clock.”
“He said, ‘It looks like a movie bomb to me.’”
Police don’t believe the device is dangerous, but say it could be mistaken for a fake explosive.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations is investigating, saying the incident is typical of the negative attitudes toward Muslims in Irving.
News of Mohamed’s arrest quickly spread on social media, as Twitter users showed support for the student using the hashtags #IStandWithAhmed and #HelpAhmedMake.
Several scientists, teachers and people within the tech community also shared support on Twitter.
Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who has more than 1.4 million followers on Twitter, tweeted at the account @IStandWithAhmed, inviting the young thinker to Toronto to take part in a science show.
U.S. President Barack Obama also chimed in his support for the 9th-grader, inviting Mohamed and his “cool” clock to the White House.
When asked there was bias involved in the incident, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said it was too early “to draw that direct assessment from here.”
Earnest added that Mohamed’s teachers had “failed him.”
“This is an instance where you have people who have otherwise dedicated their lives to teach our children who failed in that effort, potentially because of some things in their conscience and the power of stereotypes,” he said.
Mohamed has invited to an astronomy night the White House is organizing sometime in October with leading scientists.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg posted a message of support to his site saying: “Having the skill and ambition to build something cool should lead to applause.”
“Ahmed, if you ever want to come by Facebook, I’d love to meet you,” Zuckerberg wrote. “Keep building.”
Below is more social media reaction to the incident.
https://twitter.com/SimranColumbia/status/644154336038158338/photo/1
At a Wednesday morning press conference, Irving Police Department said there was no evidence of intent to create harm and that the case has been dropped, NBC News reported.
Police later said they wouldn’t press chargers
Ahmed told reporters during a news conference Wednesday afternoon that he remains suspended from school until Thursday, and plans to transfer to a private school.
–with files from The Associated Press
Comments