When Ahmed Mohamed went to his high school in Irving, Texas, Monday, he was so excited. A teenager with dreams of becoming an engineer, he wanted to show his teacher the digital clock he'd made from a pencil case.
The 14-year-old's day ended not with praise, but punishment, after the school called police and he was arrested. A photo shows Ahmed, wearing a NASA t-shirt, looking confused and upset as he's being led out of school in handcuffs.
"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.
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."
The teenager did that because, well, it was a clock, he said.
On Wednesday, police announced that the teen will not be charged.
"Will not be charged." Well that's mighty white of them.
One guy on Twitter pointed out just how incredibly unfair this was.
#IStandWithAhmed
When a white kid builds nuclear fusion reactor it's cool
but when a Muslim builds a clock it's not pic.twitter.com/TFwfg1lUf4
— wiss.➶ (@BUCKVBVRNES) September 16, 2015
Ahh Texas. Will you ever NOT be a hot bed of racism and Islamophobia?Well at least the kid has the President on his side.
Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It's what makes America great.
— President Obama (@POTUS) September 16, 2015
Of course in Texas that will only make him seem more suspicious.This seems like a good place for this.
We need more Ahmeds here in the US.
ReplyDeleteMy wish for that boy is a wonderful future - and I'm sure he will have one. It is so pathetic that they arrested him on charges of a hoax bomb. It could have ended so much worse given where the incident happened. I am so done with willful ignorance.
ReplyDeleteWe get it, Gryphen. You don't like Texas. Your ignorance in painting all Texans with the same brush is astounding. Fortunately, not all Texans believe that everyone in Alaska is a stupid as Sarah Palin. Grow up.
ReplyDeleteYOU grow up.
DeleteWell, smart Texan. How about you stop electing murderous fools like Perry and Abbott. Stop shaming women. Stop killing innocent men. Stop racially profiling high school kids. Stop teaching religion in public schools. Stop allowing everyone to carry assault rifles everywhere. Stop threatening immigrants. Get Cruz out of the Senate and back in Daddy's megascam.
DeleteI have more, but take care of a few of these and come back with your clean brush.
You forgot about Louie Gohmert, Joe Barton, Blake Farenthold, Randy "baby killer" Neubarger, rewriting the civil war, flipping out over a military exercise, Jerry Jones, Rev. Hagee, keeping clinically dead women on life support because they are pregnant and making them incubators etc
DeleteThank you...you are so right!
DeleteBoth states have plenty of sensible and thoughtful citizens who don't subscribe to the lunacy of the extremists, unfortunately they rarely raise their voices.
DeleteHey 4:27, I hope you read all the posts below. It's not Gryphen's fault, so stop laying the blame on him; you all deserve the vitriol coming your way.
DeleteHonestly even though I'm from the west, with all the gun-toting fools and the politicians backing them, I really have no desire to go to Texas until things change.
I am still hoping Texas will seccede from the United States. Looking forward to yanking all of the federal government money we plough into this drag on the Nation
DeleteWell, the non-stupid Texans have obviously not been active enough in preventing the REALLY stupid from taking seats of governance, management and responsibility. YES, you fool, school board elections matter.
DeleteClearly, something is wrong in Texas. The governor is a tea party conspiracy theorist. Texas sets the standard for dumbing down textbooks. You can barely find an abortion clinic. You can carry guns openly into Starbucks, but a 14-year-old kid can't carry his homemade clock into a school. At least Alaska is separated from the lower 48 by Canada. Maybe we should build a fence around the entire state but allow Mexicans and anyone as smart as Ahmed to emigrate. I stand with Gryphen.
DeleteOn Chris Hayes' show last night, as Chris was interviewing Ahmed and his mother, an MIT professor called in and told Ahmed "You are the kind of student we want!!"
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, the Irving mayor was defending the cops.
Remember: This is Texass.
Police found a Physics textbook in his backpack and will now arrest him for planning on building a nuclear bomb.
ReplyDeleteGovernor Abbot praised the police and said a mushroom cloud will not happen on my watch.
Ahmed Mohamed will be transferred to Guantanamo Bay detention camp on Saturday.
I guess the crazy majority in Texas will never learn anything.
ReplyDeleteYou really CAN'T fix stupid...
First question is who took the picture and posted it. Was it meant to bring attention to something stupid or was the person who posted it trying to embarrass the young man. And he deserved to be arrested. We don't need none of that sciencey technology stuff in Texas. I want to see if we hear a peep out of Fox News on this or if they are ignoring it. I am surprised this kid wasn't connected to Jade Helm, especially after the shout out from the President. And kudos to NASA, twitter, google, facebook, and all the other organizations for standing with him.
ReplyDeleteHis sister took that picture as he was being arrested and taken into custody after an hour twenty-five minutes of interrogation (during which he was refused to have his parents present, despite multiple requests by Ahmed to bring them in.) The school and the police department of this town will be in for one hell of a shock when the monetary judgements come in against them.
DeleteAll of those moronic ammosexuals can strut about unmolested in Texass with firearms strapped to their bodies but a 14 year old with a science project is arrested. As far as I know they didn't even call out the bomb squad. They knew it wasn't a bomb.
ReplyDeleteMy hope is that Ahmed eventually becomes a Nobel laureate for finding the cure for Texass/rill Murikan stupidity and racism.
Nah, he won;t waste his time worrying about the jerks in his state..he'll be too busy curing cancer or ending our need for oil. Go Ahmad!
DeleteHi Gryphen! It is really sad when a bright mind is stifled by pure ignorance and paranoia! We can thank morons like palin for peddling lies and bullshit to pander to the uneducated minions who thrive on such fear-mongering! It was comforting to see President Obama reach out to Ahmed and give him a real confidence boost! Also, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield reached out to Ahmed as well; he is personally inviting him to Toronto at the end of October to attend a science fair being held then.It's great to be Canadian! See the full story at cbcnews.ca. As for the above poster slamming Gryphen's feelings towards Texas, the image they portray is the impression most other people get. Unfortunately, the Texans with a good degree of intellect are being overshadowed by those who harbour ignorance. This is the image that the rest of the world sees.
ReplyDeleteChris Hadfield is AWSOME! Engineer, fighter pilot, astronaut and the only person to shoot a music video in space. When he was in the international space station he psted pictures, gave talks and I really think drew a lot of interest back to space exploration.
DeleteI hope the parents sue the school and the local police force. The insanity that is much of the US in 2015 has got to end. By the way, did any of the GOP contestants on last night's episode of "Who's the Dumbest Candidate This Week" speak up for the boy and for science?
ReplyDeleteBeaglemom
A non-white boy? Science? They'd have to be insane..oh...they'd have to be human.
DeleteBobby Jindal, of all people, spoke in his favor. Meanwhile though, Donald Trump came out with an anti-vaxxer spiel, so the Republicans don't have to start clutching their pearls just yet....
ReplyDeleteOh, I forgot---Jindal then said that, even though Ahmed should not have been arrested, that jailing Kim Davis was worse.
DeleteSo with that, I guess he redeemed himself a little bit with the base.
Yeah but Jindal has continued the dumbing down of Louisiana's educational system from elementary school through graduate school.
DeleteBeaglemom
Well, I guess there is a silverlining in this for this kid. Facebook invited him, he got a scholarship to Huntsville's Space Camp, an invitation to MIT, and other things.
ReplyDeleteGood luck, kiddo, your future looks bright - especially if you get out of TexASS!
.
.
.
This one really pissed me off. Look at him. He's just a scrawny kid in glasses and a NASA shirt. This is who you interrogate for hours and treat like a terrorist?
ReplyDeleteThis is what happens when your republican presidential candidates only refer to Muslims as "radical Islamic terrorists".
I am just thankful he got out of police custody alive! With all this hatred been inflamed, it's only a matter of time until a bright kid like him is gunned down by a right wing nut job.
I am so glad the president and so many engineers are rallying around him. He deserves it. Watch the video of Chris Hayes interviewing this kid. At the end, they bring in the Dean of MIT (which is his dream school) and she tells Ahmed that he'd be the perfect engineering student and she invites him to go on a tour of MIT.
And the kids face just lights up!
This is the radical terrorist who deserved to be treated like he wasn't even human because he was going to blow up his school?? Sometimes I'm really ashamed of my fellow Americans. I honestly have tears in my eyes thinking about it.
But this kid is going to come out on top. One day he's going to be making more money than any of us and he will be doing very important things!
I agree 100%. Well said.
DeleteIt's just past noon on the east coast, too early even for us to get drunk.
ReplyDeleteFar more than Obama's election proved we are a post-racial society, it has ripped the veil off how stubbornly we've refused to evolve. The point here is clear: if your skin isn't alabaster, you're to be viewed with suspicion.
If they really thought it was a bomb, why wasn't the school evacuated?
ReplyDeleteYes, that's where it all falls apart. From reading the story, I'm getting that the adults - school and cops - weren't satisfied that he wasn't trying to pull a 'bomb hoax' until well after he was arrested. That's crazy. The first teacher he showed it to obviously did not think he was trying to pull a bomb hoax, and didn't exactly do him any favors by not saying "Let me keep this until the end of the day and you can pick it up before you go home" or a half-dozen other things he could have done. But the other adults involved also had a half-dozen other ways they could have handled the situation better and more appropriately than they did. Paranoid fear and ignorance, what a scary combination.
DeleteExactly! If they honestly thought there was even the slightest possibility that this clock was a bomb, these people would've evacuated the school IMMEDIATELY! We are talking about a school full of kids for crying out loud!
DeleteThis is pure racism and Islamophobia. I really hope this kid and his family sue and win big time.
you are overthinking it.
DeleteThe police didn't think it was a bomb. That's why they called it a hoax. A loaf of bread is the same thing. Young man is uppity and brown, and that name- all the probable cause they needed to cuff and stuff him.
Here's the logic fail. For it to be a bomb hoax, the perp has to act like it's a bomb. Place it somewhere, tell people he's got something "dangerous" etc. Ahmed said, I have a clock; I built this clock. Isn't it cool? No hoax was involved. No real bomb was involved. They, especially that princinotyourpal with the overly done hair and makeup, screwed up royally. ANd detaining a kid who is askign fro his parents and NOT notifying the parent - I want them to sue the school to teh point it shuts down and she loses her job. ANd before you go into - it'll hurt the students...their parents should have not voted in the school board that hired this idiot.
DeleteAny quick guesses which baby mama thinks this is all wrong?
ReplyDeleteNot the arrest, the presidential invitation?
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/bristolpalin/2015/09/obama-invites-kid-mistakenly-arrested-for-building-bomb-to-white-house/
Bristol. I'm surprised you had the free time to watch. I thought you might be birthing another bastard child.
"Childish games like this from our president have divided our country… even more today than when he was elected."
DeleteBitc pleeze!
"Childish games"???!!! This from Miss Perpetually-Unmarried-But-Twice-Pregnant Selfie Gangfinger Fishlips?
DeleteChildish games. Good God.
We would love to have Bristol visit us at MIT!
Deletelol
Hey Bristol, stupid illiterate, you really should have made sure your blogghostwriter (who hires a ghostwriter for a blog?) at least read the tweet. The President never mentioned Ahmed's ethnicity. He just invited a smart kid who'd been dissed for being smart to the White House. YOU're the one who sees race. How...racist of you, Bristol.
DeleteDivided the country?
DeleteHere I thought that was some teabilly grannie from Wasilly that helped do that with her dogwhistling word salads.
Have you ever heard of such a person Barstool?
Bristol is mad because the White House has not invited ANY of the Palins to visit.
DeleteBeaglemom
Won't be charged, but on any application if it says have you ever been arrested, he has to state yes.
ReplyDeleteDumbass Texas. And I'll bet those cops were real happy to arrest this kid.
But I blame the school and specifically the teacher. Yep. Dumbass hysterical teacher and rigid intolerant administration because, you know, TEXAS.
They're the ones that had to have their textbooks rewritten special for them to appease the right wing nutjob talibangelicals on the school board.
This kid is transferring schools. I'd like to see the entire family transfer states.
Come to California kid. You'll not only get extra credit but win the science fair.
He's invited to Astronomy Night at the White House (I hope all expenses paid) and Nasa and MIT have invited him. Hope he gets a college scholarship out of this too.
We should fall all over ourselves making Texas look like the dumb fucks they are.
As little as I like Texas, Alaska is remarkably similar...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ktoo.org/2015/09/14/busted-alarm-clock-prompts-bomb-scare-southeast-ferry-terminal/
Ahmed is also black. His family is from Sudan, which is in Africa.
ReplyDeleteThey released him without pressing charges, but he was still arrested.
ReplyDeleteAnd they haven't given him his clock back.
It's not evidence since there will be no charges. So why wasn't his property returned to him?
Gonna be embarrassing when he goes to the White House and President Obama asks to see his clock and he has to tell the president the police wouldn't give it back.
A lot of fun is being poked at this situation as is, with photos potato clocks made by scientists when they were in school being posted with captions like "Good thing I'm white or they might have thought these were potato grenades.".
I expect the police either destroyed his clock or someone took it. Whatever happens, they are up for being ridiculed again when Ahmed can't produce the clock he was arrested for building.