IRVING — Ahmed Mohamed — who makes his own radios and repairs his own go-kart — hoped to impress his teachers when he brought a homemade clock to MacArthur High on Monday.

Instead, the school phoned police about Ahmed’s circuit-stuffed pencil case.

So the 14-year-old missed the student council meeting and took a trip 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 — though they acknowledge he told everyone who would listen that it’s a clock.

In the meantime, Ahmed’s been suspended, his father is upset and the Council on American-Islamic Relations is once again eyeing claims of Islamophobia in Irving.

Box of circuit boards

A box full of circuit boards sits at the foot of Ahmed’s small bed in central Irving. His door marks the border where the Mohamed family’s cramped but lavishly decorated house begins to look like the back room at RadioShack.

“Here in high school, none of the teachers know what I can do,” Ahmed said, fiddling with a cable while a soldering iron dangled from the shelf behind him.

He loved robotics club in middle school and was searching for a similar niche in his first few weeks of high school.

So he decided to do what he’s always done: He built something.

Ahmed’s clock was hardly his most elaborate creation. He said he threw it together in about 20 minutes before bedtime on Sunday: a circuit board and power supply wired to a digital display, all strapped inside a case with a tiger hologram on the front.

He showed it to his engineering teacher first thing Monday morning and didn’t get quite the reaction he’d hoped for.

“He was like, ‘That’s really nice,’” Ahmed said. “‘I would advise you not to show any other teachers.’”

He 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 brought his invention up to show her afterward.

“She was like, it looks like a bomb,” he said.

“I told her, ‘It doesn’t look like a bomb to me.’”

The teacher kept the clock. When the principal and a police officer pulled Ahmed out of sixth period, he suspected he wouldn’t get it back.

They led Ahmed into a room where four other police officers waited. He said an officer he’d never seen before leaned back in his chair and remarked: “Yup. That’s who I thought it was.”

Ahmed felt suddenly conscious of his brown skin and his name — one of the most common in the Muslim religion. But the police kept him busy with questions.

The 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’t make a written statement, he said.

“They were like, ‘So you tried to make a bomb?’” Ahmed said.

“I told them no, I was trying to make a clock.”

“He said, ‘It looks like a movie bomb to me.’”

Police skepticism

Ahmed 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’t believe Ahmed was giving them the whole story.

 

 

“We have no information that he claimed it was a bomb,” McLellan said. “He kept maintaining it was a clock, but there was no broader explanation.”

Asked what broader explanation the boy could have given, the spokesman explained:

“It could reasonably be mistaken as a device if left in a bathroom or under a car. The concern was, what was this thing built for? Do we take him into custody?”

Police led Ahmed out of MacArthur about 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 — the one “who knows I’m a good boy.”

Ahmed was spared the inside of a cell. The police sent him out of the juvenile detention center to meet his parents shortly after taking his fingerprints.

They’re still investigating the case, and Ahmed hasn’t been back to school. His family said the principal suspended him for three days.

“They thought, ‘How could someone like this build something like this unless it’s a threat?’” Ahmed said.

 

 

An Irving ISD statement gave no details about the case, citing student privacy laws. But a letter addressed to "Parents/Guardians" and signed by MacArthur Principal Dan Cummings said Irving police had "responded to a suspicious-looking item on campus" and had determined that "the item ... did not pose a threat to your child's safety."

‘Invent good things’

“He just wants to invent good things for mankind,” said Ahmed’s father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, who immigrated from Sudan and occasionally returns there to run for president. “But because his name is Mohamed and because of Sept. 11, I think my son got mistreated.”

Mohamed is familiar with anti-Islamic politics. He once made national headlines for debating a Florida pastor who burned a Quran.

But he wasn’t paying much attention this summer when Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne became a national celebrity in anti-Islamic circles, fueling rumors in speeches that the religious minority was plotting to usurp American laws.

However, the Council on American-Islamic Relations took note.

“This all raises a red flag for us: how Irving’s government entities are operating in the current climate,” said Alia Salem, who directs the council’s North Texas chapter and has spoken to lawyers about Ahmed’s arrest.

“We’re still investigating,” she said, “but it seems pretty egregious.”

Meanwhile, Ahmed is sitting home in his bedroom, tinkering with old gears and electrical converters, pronouncing words like “ethnicity” for what sounds like the first time.

He’s vowed never to take an invention to school again.

I blame him a little, but more importantly I blame his engineering/science teacher, who should have A) took the clock if he felt it looked odd, and kept it until the end of the school day. and B)Should have stood up for his student and explained that it was a clock, before they haul the poor kid down to the police station.

Can't blame the kid at all, he is not thinking that he will be in trouble for this...just wants to show what he can do

We have become a bunch of retards, this is how terrorists are winning.  As kids we played with guns now a child plays with one and he can be hauled away too.

 

In retrospect had he told the teacher what he was making before bringing it in, may have made a difference. That boy will now feel stifled.Dam!

Why the heck will you blame him? On what basis? Is there something I am missing/ My seven year old grandson has an electronic kit with a book of instructions. Were he to make a clock and take it to  school and showed his teacher, is this what he would expect? The boy constructed something and showed his teacher. The teacher, school system and police did an injustice here.

A pot head convicted DWI guy with a muslim name shoot up a  MILATARY RECRUITING OFFICE AND IMMEDIATELY HE IS A TERRORIST. a GAY GUY GO ON LIVE TELEVISION AND KILLED THE REPORTERS AND the media reported that he has problems he is not a terrorist.

 

Look Cain. no blame should be attributed to the boy. He made something on his own and showed the teacher. It was obvious that it was something he was proud about and he wanted to get some recognition from his teacher. There was no reason for him to inform his teacher prior to him making the clock. It is not as if it was a class project.

Not in any way blaming the child,nor should he be expected to do as I said "in retrospect"

Thanks for your post. Takes a lot of courage to admit, something I have difficulty doing.

and that is why 

This a pure racist  crap.

If 'white Nate Johnson' had done the same, he might have got an award.

Five police officers interrogating a student without parents presence, something is terrible warped in their attitude and training.

 

Muslims around the world need to implement some kind of education program to counter this kind of attitude, because this issue is getting much worse.   

The other parents from the school should stand up for this boy.

https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/...1ca5&oe=566490B1

Thank you President Obama.

 

Please tell people like D2 that this little  Muslim boy did not cause this on himself.

Is what kina add is dat...@POT US

Social Media is blowing up about this i9njustice.

Where is D2 who love to say Muslims cause shit on themselves

Even the GREAT Obama is getting involved on the side of the wonderful Kid!!!!!!!  America need MORE such talented Kids!!!!!!!!!!!

Great move President Obama.

When some people put dem foot in dem mouth due to racism, it could be a boost for those they put down.

I hope this boy tek up the president offer and visit the White House, wid his clock. It could show those racist asses, that racism don't pay.     

America need more Obama as well 

I would have given this guy a scholarship if he was living in the UK. 

yOU CAN STILL DO THAT.

HEHEHEHE  Mouth Tar

Chief is GNI terrorist fun telling everyone to shut them poke or put on a vagina cork to close the hole.

Do you think I will get invite to the White House for my invention?

At least I can recognize a poke when I see one.

You skont blind!

I am only interested in offering a scholarship to someone in the UK. I have my personal reasons for that. One of it relates to a debt I owe to the country for providing me with a free education. The government introduced fees about 8 years ago, which now makes it hard for people of lesser income to afford to send their kids to higher education.

       
Bro, you have nothing to worry about. Brother Hussain is living there. You only have to request halal and the w/h bandara is ready fuh kurbani. Lol

Seriously God is great! 

look who is in the White House Brother Hoosain!!

https://twitter.com/Shehr0ze/s...s/644135989623939072