Texas student arrested when homemade clock mistaken for bomb
Jon Herskovitz, REUTERS
First posted: Wednesday, September 16, 2015 11:50 AM EDT | Updated: Wednesday, September 16, 2015 12:52 PM EDT
Irving MacArthur High School student Ahmed Mohamed, 14, poses for a photo at his home in Irving, Texas on Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2015. Mohamed was arrested and interrogated by Irving Police officers on Monday after bringing a homemade clock to school. Police don't believe the device is dangerous, but say it could be mistaken for a fake explosive. He was suspended from school for three days, but he has not been charged. (Vernon Bryant/The Dallas Morning News via AP)
AUSTIN, Texas - A Texas teenager was taken away from school in handcuffs after he brought a homemade clock to his Dallas-area school this week and the staff mistook it for a bomb, police said on Wednesday.
Ahmed Mohamed, 14, was accused of making a hoax bomb. The Council on American-Islamic Relations said the student is Muslim and the case serves as an example of religious bigotry.
"My hobby is to invent stuff," Mohamed, a student at MacArthur High School in the suburb of Irving, told the Dallas Morning News in a video it posted online.
The new ninth-grader told the newspaper he enjoys robotics and was looking to continue his interests as he started high school so he showed the clock, which had a digital display and a circuit board, to a teacher.
Irving Independent School District officials were not immediately available for comment.
"They took me to a room filled with five officers," Mohamed told the Morning News. "They interrogated me and searched through my stuff and took my tablet and my invention."
He was handcuffed and taken to a detention center where he was fingerprinted and had mug shots taken, the newspaper said. He was freed when his parents came for him and is not expected to face formal charges.
Mohamed has been suspended from school for three days, the Morning News said.
Police said the device was placed in a case and could be mistaken for a bomb. They denied the student's religion had anything to do with its response.
"There is no basis for those allegations whatsoever," Irving Police spokesman James McLellan said.
Two school police officers initially questioned the student and he told the officers he had built a clock. He did not offer further explanation, McLellan said.
"He didn't explain properly what it was and they felt compelled to arrest him." McLellan said.
The bomb squad was not dispatched because officers did not believe it to be an explosive device, he said.
Mohamed told the newspaper: "It made me feel like I wasn't a human. It made me feel like I was a criminal."
