But Boyd said authorities determined that the teenager did not intend to alarm anyone and the device, which the chief called “a homemade experiment,” was innocuous.Īhmed, who aspires to go to MIT, said he was pleased the charges were dropped and not bothered that police didn’t apologize for arresting him. On Wednesday, police announced the teen will not be charged.Ĭhief Larry Boyd said Ahmed should have been “forthcoming” by going beyond the description that what he made was a clock. The teenager did that because, well, it was a clock, he said. Irving Police spokesman Officer James McLellan told the station, “We attempted to question the juvenile about what it was and he would simply only tell us that it was a clock.” “They arrested me and they told me that I committed the crime of a hoax bomb, a fake bomb,” the freshman later explained to WFAA after authorities released him.
In the image, he looks confused and upset as he’s being led out of school in handcuffs. “It was really sad that she took the wrong impression of it.”Īhmed talked to the media gathered on his front yard and appeared to wear the same NASA T-shirt he had on in a picture taken as he was being arrested. “I built a clock to impress my teacher but when I showed it to her, she thought it was a threat to her,” Ahmed told reporters Wednesday. The 14-year-old’s day ended not with praise, but punishment, after the school called police and he was arrested. A teenager with dreams of becoming an engineer, he wanted to show his teacher the digital clock he’d made from a pencil case. It's what makes America great.When Ahmed Mohamed went to his high school in Irving, Texas, Monday, he was so excited. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science.
Even President Barack Obama is backing him up!Ĭool clock, Ahmed. And if the support he and his family have received on Twitter are any indication, most of us are firmly on the teen’s side, where we should be. This type of experience can stifle curiosity, ambition and drive, because kids are afraid of being targeted by authorities due to their race, culture or other factors, and while Mohamed has said he’ll never bring a homemade device to school again, we have to wonder what else he will never do again in school - speak out, volunteer in front of the classroom or work on electronics projects in his spare time? It’s even more distressing that our kids - our innocent, brilliant, inventing, electronics-loving kids - can be profiled, arrested and suspended from school because of how they look. Racial profiling isn’t just something that is done to people driving cars (which is distressing enough), like many people seem to believe. More: What people around the world really think of Americans (VIDEO) Of course, we cannot know in retrospect what the reaction might have been to a Caucasian teenager bringing in a similar device, but it’s easy to guess that “OMG bomb” might not have been the first thought to cross an instructor’s mind when she saw it. But apparently it’s not diverse enough that people don’t take one look at a brown boy with a Muslim name toting an electronic device and start phoning the police right away. Irving, Texas, is a pretty racially diverse locale, with only around 30 percent of its population of over 200,000 ticking the “white, non-Hispanic” option on the city’s census forms. The fact that his teachers looked at him and his homemade electronic device and immediately thought “bomb” is a sad, sick statement on the mindset of many. A NASA shirt! /nR4gt992gBĭespite the notion that if he had really intended it to look like a bomb, he likely wouldn’t have taken it to two different teachers and told them - told them! - it was a homemade clock, the idea that this obviously brilliant kid was racially profiled is mind-boggling. I expect they will have more to say tomorrow, but Ahmed's sister asked me to share this photo. More: Professor bans students from saying ‘God bless you’ in class Mohamed was questioned by officers, never straying from the fact that he made a clock, and was eventually led from the school in handcuffs in front of his peers while wearing a NASA shirt. And the reason soon became apparent - another teacher he showed it to informed him that it looked like a bomb, confiscated it and called the police.
In fact, his engineering teacher he showed it to thought it was nice but advised him to not show it to anyone else.
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