Ahmed Mohamed, a 9th grader from Irving in Texas hoped to impress his teachers when he brought a homemade clock to his school last Monday in a report in DallasNews.
\nRather than be pleased, the school then placed a call to the police about Ahmed\u2019s circuit-stuffed pencil case
\nThe 14-year-old missed the student council meeting and was taken in handcuffs to juvenile detention. His clock now sits in an evidence room. Police say they may yet charge him with making a hoax bomb \u2014 though they acknowledge he told everyone who would listen that it\u2019s a clock.<\/p>\n
Box of circuit boards<\/strong> Police Skepticism<\/strong> Just an invention<\/strong> Source: World Bulletin<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ahmed Mohamed, a 9th grader from Irving in Texas hoped to impress his teachers when he brought a homemade clock to his school last Monday in a report in DallasNews.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4761,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c102-muslim-minorities"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\nA box full of circuit boards sits at the foot of Ahmed\u2019s small bed in central Irving.
\n\u201cHere in high school, none of the teachers know what I can do,\u201d Ahmed said, fiddling with a cable while a soldering iron dangled from the shelf behind him.
\nHe loved robotics club in middle school and was searching for a similar niche in his first few weeks of high school.
\nSo he decided to do what he\u2019s always done: He built something. Throwing the pieces together in 20 minutes, the clock was nothing more than a circuit board and power supply wired to digital display, all strapped inside a pencil case that had a tiger hologram on the front.
\nHe showed it to his engineering teacher first thing Monday morning but his reaction was unexpected.
\n\u201cHe was like, \u2018That\u2019s really nice,\u2019\u201d Ahmed said. \u201c\u2018I would advise you not to show any other teachers.\u2019\u201d
\nHe kept the clock inside his school bag in English class, but the teacher complained when the alarm beeped in the middle of a lesson. Ahmed showed her invention.
\n\u201cShe was like, it looks like a bomb,\u201d he said.
\n\u201cI told her, \u2018It doesn\u2019t look like a bomb to me.\u2019\u201d
\nThe teacher kept the clock. When the principal and a police officer pulled Ahmed out of sixth period, he suspected he wouldn\u2019t get it back.
\nThe bell rang at least twice, he said, while the officers searched his belongings and questioned his intentions. The principal threatened to expel him if he didn\u2019t make a written statement, he said.
\n\u201cThey were like, \u2018So you tried to make a bomb?\u2019\u201d Ahmed said.
\n\u201cI told them no, I was trying to make a clock.\u201d
\n\u201cHe said, \u2018It looks like a movie bomb to me.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\nAhmed never claimed his device was anything but a clock, said police spokesman James McLellan. And police have no reason to think it was dangerous. But officers still didn\u2019t believe Ahmed was giving them the whole story.
\nPolice led Ahmed out of his school at 3 p.m., his hands cuffed behind him and an officer on each arm. A few students gaped in the halls. He remembers the shocked expression of his student counselor \u2014 the one \u201cwho knows I\u2019m a good boy.\u201d
\nThe police sent him out of the juvenile detention center to meet his parents shortly after taking his fingerprints.
\nThey\u2019re still investigating the case, and Ahmed hasn\u2019t been back to school. His family said the principal suspended him for three days.
\n\u201cThey thought, \u2018How could someone like this build something like this unless it\u2019s a threat?\u2019\u201d Ahmed said.
\nAn Irving ISD statement gave no details about the case, citing student privacy laws.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cHe just wants to invent good things for mankind,\u201d said Ahmed\u2019s father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, who immigrated from Sudan and occasionally returns there to run for president. \u201cBut because his name is Mohamed and because of Sept. 11, I think my son got mistreated.\u201d
\n\u201cThis all raises a red flag for us: how Irving\u2019s government entities are operating in the current climate,\u201d said Alia Salem, who directs the Counci of North American-Islamic Relations’, North Texas chapter and has spoken to lawyers about Ahmed\u2019s arrest.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re still investigating,\u201d she said, \u201cbut it seems pretty egregious.\u201d
\nMeanwhile, Ahmed is sitting home in his bedroom, tinkering with old gears and electrical converters, pronouncing words like \u201cethnicity\u201d for what sounds like the first time. However it is the last time that he has vowed to take any invention to school.<\/p>\n