DFW Teenager Arrested for Homemade Clock School Officials Believed Was Bomb
Ahmed Mohamed, a 14-year-old freshman at Irving MacArthur High School, saw a proud creation of a homemade clock result in him going to jail when a teacher thought it was a bomb.
Mohamed told The Dallas Morning News that creating things such as clocks and radios is nothing new for him. So, when he put the clock together in about 20 minutes Sunday night before school, he didn't think anything of it.
He took the clock to school the next day, not knowing he would end up in handcuffs and suspended from school soon after.
The alarm on the clock beeped during English class, so he gave the clock to his teacher after the interruption.
“She was like, it looks like a bomb,” he told The Dallas Morning News.
“I told her, ‘It doesn’t look like a bomb to me.’”
He was taken out of class by the school's principal and a police officer, and was led to a room with four other officers. He told the newspaper that one of the officers, who he had never seen before, said, "Yup. That's who I thought it was."
Mohamed was put in handcuffs and sent to a juvenile facility. Now, his story has gone viral all over the world.
It even prompted tweets from President Obama and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton:
Police told the Morning News that Mohamed never strayed from his story that the device was a clock, but they say he never explained anything further.
“It could reasonably be mistaken as a device if left in a bathroom or under a car," police spokesman James McLellan told the newspaper. "The concern was, what was this thing built for? Do we take him into custody?”
The school was never evacuated during the incident, though a letter was sent to parents the next day saying the school "responded to a suspicious-looking item on campus" and it did not pose a threat to the students' safety.
What are your thoughts? Do you think Ahmed was treated unfairly? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.