Dad: Ahmed Mohamed won't be returning to public high school
IRVING, Texas — Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, father of a student still suspended after being handcuffed for bringing a homemade clock to class, said Thursday evening his child will not be returning to his public high school, but will be looking for private or home-schooling options.
Ahmed Mohamed, 14, was handcuffed Monday at MacArthur High School after a teacher thought his homemade clock looked like a bomb and officials called police.
"Before I was really scared that no one was really going to care about me cause I'm Muslim and now everyone wants to interview me because of what happened," Mohamed said in an interview with WFAA-TV.
Teen who made clock ponders new school after suspension
"I want to make sure this never happens to another child globally ever again."
Twitter, where the hashtag #IStandWithAhmed trended, invited the teen to intern at its social media business. Google asked him to attend its science fair. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg invited him to visit Facebook. Even President Obama tweeted, "Cool clock Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House?"
#IStandWithAhmed takes Twitter by storm
"The American people are so eager to see what this clock is, so I'll show it to them and I'll see what their opinion is about it," Mohamed said.
School leaders in Irving, a Dallas suburb, said they wish the more than 1 million people commenting on the clock controversy via Twitter had all their facts straight. And they said if a similar situation happened, they'd handle it the same way.
"We're never going to take chances with student safety," said Lesley Weaver, a spokeswoman with the Irving Independent School District.
Irving police detained Ahmed on Monday after school officials called them because they determined his invention looked like a bomb. On Wednesday, the charges against Ahmed were dropped.
"(His English teacher was) concerned it was possibly the infrastructure for a bomb," said Irving police Chief Larry Boyd on Wednesday.
When questioned why he brought the device to school, the student "would only say it was a clock, and was not forthcoming at that time about any other details," Boyd said.
"I built the clock to impress my teacher," Ahmed said. "But when I showed it to her, she thought it was a threat to her. It was really sad that she took the wrong impression of it — and later that day, I was arrested for it."
The police chief said they decided to take the boy into custody based on the appearance of the device and as a safety precaution to protect other students. The freshman was handcuffed and transported to a juvenile processing area at the police station.
Weaver says the district stands behind its teacher, who felt uneasy when she heard beeping and spotted Mohamed's invention, which was in a briefcase with exposed wires and a timer attached.
"It is a little bit disappointing that there are so many comments on social media from people who I don't think have the complete story," Weaver said. "We have an obligation to protect all 2,800 students here at MacArthur."
Obama invites Ahmed - and his clock - to White House for Astronomy Night
And now the one student who shook their sense of safety by tinkering with science says he's transferring schools and has no plans to stop creating.
"Not my last invention and it wasn't my first," he said.