Texas 9th-Grader Arrested After Taking Homemade Clock To School

Dallas Morning News reports Irving 9th-grader arrested after taking homemade clock to school

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."

Yeah, I'd call it Islmaphobia and also giving people a reason to hate you. I mean how is there any way to read this statement differently: "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."

Read the whole article, the story is ridiculous. He brought it in, showed his "engineering teacher". I wish I had an engineering teacher in 9th grade. Ok, he likes it but tells him not to show any other teacher? And he doesn't tell/warn the principal? Fine, an english teacher isn't going to be able to discern what the circuit did and probably not the principal or the police, so why didn't they ask their engineering teacher to look at it? The one that I suspect Ahmed mentioned he showed it too. And why were the police questioning a 9th grader without his parents present?

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.

That's so freaking sad, for him and for us. At least he's now getting a lot of encouragement, @IStandWithAhmed

Update: Here's the NY Times story, Texas Student Is Under Police Investigation for Building a Clock which includes the ridiculous letter the principal sent to the parents of all the school's students.