![]() “At least some of Ahmed’s teachers failed him,” he said, adding that “this has the potential to be a teachable moment.” White House spokesman Josh Earnest called the incident an opportunity to “search our own conscious for biases that might be there.” “My son is a very brilliant boy,” Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed-who has run for president in Sudan-told CNN. “We live in an age where you can’t take things like that to school.”Ī school district spokeswoman also stood by the establishment’s response, telling reporters that anyone who saw the homemade clock would understand that “we were doing everything with an abundance of caution.” A photo provided by police showed a flat, rectangular red digital clock face screwed into the dark plush interior of a silver case along with a circuit board and some wires. That’s a very suspicious device,” Boyd told reporters. “Our reaction would have been the same either way. Police said Wednesday they have determined that Mohamed had no malicious intent and it was “just a naive set of circumstances.” Irving police chief Larry Boyd insisted that Mohamed’s ethnicity had nothing to do with the response. The school called police and Mohamed was taken away in cuffs amid suspicion he intended to frighten people with the device. When the clock’s alarm went off in another class, the teacher told him it looked like a bomb and confiscated it. “’I would advise you not to show any other teachers.’” “He was like, ‘That’s really nice,’” Mohamed said. He did not get the reaction he hoped for when he showed the clock to his engineering teacher. The son of Sudanese immigrants who live in a Dallas suburb, Mohamed loved robotics club in middle school and was hoping to find something similar at MacArthur High School. I wanted to show something small at first… they took it wrong so I was arrested for a hoax bomb.” “My hobby is to invent stuff,” the teen said in a video posted on the paper’s website, filmed in his electronics-filled bedroom. Mohamed told the Dallas Morning News he hoped to impress teachers by bringing the clock to school on Monday. space agency NASA’s logo was retweeted thousands of times in a matter of hours and “#IStandWithAhmed” became the top trending hashtag on Twitter. A photo of Mohamed standing in handcuffs while wearing a t-shirt with the U.S. It’s what makes America great,” Obama tweeted. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. President Barack Obama congratulated Ahmed Mohamed, 14, on his skills in a pointed rebuke to school and police officials-who defended his arrest-amid accusations of Islamophobia. "He is an excited kid who is very bright and wants to share it with his teachers.Ben Torres-Getty Images North America-AFP Police have already cleared Ahmed Mohamed, saying he had no malicious intent when making his own clock.Ī Muslim teenager arrested after a Texas teacher mistook his homemade clock for a bomb won invitations to the White House, Google and Facebook on Wednesday in a surge of public support. "I think this wouldn't even be a question if his name wasn't Ahmed Mohamed," said Alia Salem, executive director of CAIR's North Texas chapter. The Dallas chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said Ahmed was targeted because of his religious and racial identity. ![]() Police confiscated the case along with Ahmed's tablet computer. A few hours later, the student said the school's principal and resource officer pulled him out of class. Police said the student had the briefcase in his English class, where he plugged it into an electrical outlet and it started to make noise.Īhmed said his English teacher confiscated his case. ![]() "In this instance, it's clear that at least some of Ahmed's teachers failed him."Īccording to Irving police, Ahmed's case contained a digital clock that the student had taken apart and rearranged. "The fact is that America's best teachers in our schools, in our best schools at least, nurture the intellectual curiosity of all of our students," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said. The White House invited Ahmed to Astronomy Night at the White House next month, an event that connects students with government scientists and NASA astronauts. The travel website said it was offering Ahmed a free flight to visit the "NASA center of his choice."
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