The department says Mohamed was handcuffed as standard procedure for his own safety and the safety of the officers. Texas law considers a person guilty of possessing a hoax bomb if the device is intended to cause public alarm or "a reaction of any type by law enforcement officers," according to a statement from the Irving Police Department. "Having no other information to go on, the student was taken into custody for possession of a hoax bomb." "The student had only said it was a clock and was not forthcoming at that time about any other details," said Chief Boyd last Wednesday. Irving police told NBC DFW school officials were suspicious of the clock and acted out of caution. "This all raises a red flag for us: how Irving's government entities are operating in the current climate," Alia Salem, executive director of the chapter told the paper. The Dallas branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said it is investigating the incident. The school district confirmed to the Dallas Morning News that his father met with the superintendent on Monday to pull him out of the district entirely. Mohamed was allowed to return to school last Friday but he said last Wednesday that he's looking to transfer schools. The Irving Independent School District declined to comment on the suspension citing student privacy laws. The school's principal suspended Mohamed for three days over the "hoax bomb," which his father, Elhassan Mohamed, told The Dallas Morning News was an example of Islamophobia. "It made me feel like I wasn't human," he said to The Dallas Morning News. Mohamed also recalled during the interview, which aired last Wednesday night, that one of the officers sat down in what he called "the interrogation room" at the school, looked at him and said, "That's who I thought it was." The 14-year-old said he was questioned for nearly an hour and a half. You're in the middle of an interrogation at the moment.'" In an interview on All in with Chris Hayes on MSNBC, Mohamed said that when he asked police if he could call his parents, "They said, 'No, you can't call your parents. He was then questioned and taken away in handcuffs to juvenile detention to be fingerprinted. ![]() The school then called police, and the principal and an officer pulled Mohamed out of class. "I told her, 'It doesn't look like a bomb to me.'" "She was like, 'It looks like a bomb,'" he said. After class Mohamed showed it to the teacher. Later, an English teacher heard the clock's alarm beep during a lesson. The teacher advised him "not to show any other teachers," so he decided to keep it in his bag. Mohamed told The Dallas Morning News last Tuesday he first showed the clock to his engineering teacher Monday morning. When asked if he was overwhelmed with the support he received on social media, he said, "I felt pretty down that no one would know about made me seem really happy." "Don't let people change who you are," he said. ![]() "I'm the person who built a clock and got in a lot of trouble for it," Ahmed said at a news conference last Wednesday with his family, saying he planned to transfer from his high school. ![]() Many people have shown solidarity with the hashtag #istandwithahmed and posting photos of themselves with clocks and watches. The incident caused an uproar nationwide, with President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg publicly supporting Ahmed. A 14-year-old student in Irving, Texas, was arrested and suspended last Tuesday from school after bringing a homemade clock to his high school that teachers suspected could be a "hoax bomb."Īhmed Mohamed, a ninth-grader at MacArthur High School, said he loves inventing things and hoped the clock he made over the weekend would impress his teachers.
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