Ninth Grader Arrested for Building a Clock

Meilin Lee · Sep 16, 2015

So a 14 year old kid in Texas decided to build a clock to impress his engineering teacher. Instead of getting praised, the boy was accused of building a bomb, and was arrested by police:

A ninth-grader in Texas with a talent for tinkering built an electronic clock and brought it to school earlier this week to show an engineering teacher. But instead of being impressed, the school in Irving accused Ahmed Mohamed of building a bomb and called the police, who sent him to juvenile hall in handcuffs, according to local news reports. His family and a local advocacy group worry that Mohamed was targeted for his race and Muslim faith.

“He just wants to invent good things for mankind,” Ahmed’s father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, who immigrated to Texas from Sudan and has run for president against the incumbent Omar al-Bashir, told The Dallas Morning News on Tuesday. “But because his name is Mohamed and because of Sept. 11, I think my son got mistreated."

The 14-year-old freshman told the newspaper that the clock, which featured a circuit board and power supply wired to a digital display, took him about 20 minutes to build on Sunday night. He’d also built radios, repaired his own go-kart and was part of the robotics club in middle school, and wanted to impress his new teachers at MacArthur High School.

But when Mohamed showed the gadget to a teacher on Monday morning, she advised him not to show it to anyone else. Another teacher said she thought it was a bomb after the clock’s alarm beeped in the middle of class, the Morning News said.

Later Monday afternoon, the school principal and a police officer pulled Mohamed out of class, leading him to a room where four officers questioned him about his invention.

“They were like, ‘So you tried to make a bomb?’” Mohamed told The Morning News.

He insisted that he had made a clock, but an officer told him, "It looks like a movie bomb to me," according to the newspaper.

ABC affiliate WFAA reported that police said Mohamed was being “passive aggressive” in answering their questions about the clock and that he didn’t have a “reasonable answer” as to what he was doing with it.

He was handcuffed and escorted by police to a juvenile detention facility, where he was fingerprinted and then released without charge shortly thereafter. A photo of Mohamed wearing a NASA T-shirt and a startled expression as he was led away by police has since rocketed across social media.

MacArthur High School also reportedly suspended Mohamed for three days.

The case has piqued the interest of the Council for Islamic-American Relations (CAIR), which worries that Mohamed was targeted because of his race and religion.

“I think this wouldn’t even be a question if his name wasn't Ahmed Mohamed,” Alia Salem, with the Dallas chapter of CAIR, told WFAA. “He is an excited kid who is very bright and wants to share it with his teachers.”

In 2013, the California chapter of CAIR found that nearly half of Muslim students polled in a statewide survey had experienced some form of anti-Muslim bullying, with one in five female students reporting that they had been picked on for wearing a headscarf to school.

CAIR has also observed that, among 36 bills or amendments introduced in 16 states in 2013 that "vilify Islamic religious practices," six of them were proposed in Texas.

And a 2014 Pew Research Institute poll found that Muslims were rated most negatively of all religious groups in the U.S., receiving an average score of 40 out of 100 on a “feeling thermometer.” The only other groups to receive below a “neutral” score of 50 were Mormons, at 48, and atheists, at 41.

CAIR plans to accompany Mohamed and his father in a meeting with the school principal and the police chief on Wednesday afternoon, WFAA said.

As for Mohamed’s clock, it is being held in the police evidence room, according to The Dallas Morning News.

Mohamed, newspaper said, vowed to never bring one of his inventions to school again.
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Source

What's more is the principal didn't even bother apologizing.

Really America? Are we now targeting bright young minds just because they're brown or have a name like 'Ahmed'??

Patman · Sep 16, 2015

- When I grow up I want to be the first person in human history to teleport himself.
- I' m sorry what ?
- It' s already possible to transport quantum information from a location to another. Right now there are super computers that can transport quantum information to space, so why not send people to space ?
- Well uh ... even if you could build this thing, which you can' t ...
- I' ve already built it. Well ... I' m building it. In my garage.
- Is it next to your flying car ?
- I' m not working on that anymore. Just this now. I call it the biomatter shuttle.
- Biomatter ...
- Technically I' m shuttling matter from one place to another. Well, first matter. But once I test biological matter I can ...
- Well uh ... thank you Mr Richards this is all very interesting, but the assignment was to pick a real career in the real world.

Laurence_Fox · Sep 16, 2015

Baymax said: ↑

Really America? Are we now targeting bright young minds just because they're brown or have a name like 'Ahmed'??
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That is precisely what is happening. White America has always been wary of those that are different than them in some way. Even those that look the same on the surface.

But the same thing has happened in many other locations throughout history.

Hayabusa · Sep 16, 2015

I'm annoyed but not that surprised to be honest. Just hearing some comments from the Republican Debate paints a very clear picture of who so many people oppose in this country.

61 · Sep 17, 2015

reaction was understood, clock looks exceedingly suspicious, but no action should have been taken after it was discovered it was just a clock. that people are rallying behind him in support and he's being invited to the most important house on the planet is so indicative of how horrendously trepidatious and overly-apologetic people are with regards to potentially offending anyone and it is disgusting. school should have apologized and left it at that. no suspension. no arrest. no glamour.

Laurence_Fox · Sep 20, 2015

Ahmed was repeatedly denied access to legal consul or to his parents, something that is clearly illegal in Texas or frankly anywhere in the United States. Your Miranda rights, which are told to you upon being arrested, will tell you '...You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one, one will be provided to you...' and so on and so forth.

Ahmed was not given that right or the right to see his parents. And according to Section 52.025 of the Texas Family Code, that is illegal.

“A child may not be left unattended in a juvenile processing office and is entitled to be accompanied by the child’s parent, guardian, or other custodian or by the child’s attorney,”
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“person taking a child into custody shall promptly give notice of the person’s action and a statement of the reason for taking the child into custody, to the child’s parent, guardian, or custodian.”
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When the police chief was asked why Ahmed had not seen his parents until he was released, he said that he did 'not have answers to [that] specific question'.

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Ninth Grader Arrested for Building a Clock

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