Texas schoolboy and his clock score Obama visit as authorities defend arrest
Texas schoolboy and his clock score Obama visit as authorities defend arrest
‘That is not America. That is not like us,’ says father of 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed, who will visit the White House next month for science fai
A 14-year-old Texas boy who was arrested after bringing a homemade clock to school has accepted an invitation to visit the White House as school and city officials insisted they made the right decision when they handcuffed, interrogated and arrested him this week.
Ahmed Mohamed, an engineering enthusiast, brought the clock to MacArthur high school in Irving, Texas, on Monday to show one of his teachers. Hours later,he was handcuffed and arrested by school resource officers as part of “standard procedure” after being summoned to a school office to explain the device.
At a press conference outside his home on Wednesday, after his story swept across the internet and drew messages of support from tech companies and the president of the United States, Ahmed told reporters: “I built the clock to impress my teacher, but when I showed it to her she thought it was a threat to her. It was really sad that she took a wrong impression of it.”
He said he was still suspended until Thursday, and was thinking of transferring to a different school.
Wearing a Nasa t-shirt, Mohamed thanked his supporters on social media, as well as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. There was a cheer when he announced that he would be visiting the White House.
The White House said Ahmed was invited to participate in an astronomy night next month. Press secretary Josh Earnest said the Obama administration thought the boy was “failed” by his teachers and called the incident a “teachable moment”.
His father and sister both spoke too, thanking his son’s many supporters online. But his father also spoke angrily about his son’s treatment. “My kid was hurt and was tortured and arrested and mistreated in front of his friends inside of the school,” he said. “That is not America. That is not like us. We left every place … we love to be in Irving, Texas. We love it and we love our people here.”
On Monday, Ahmed was taken from his school to police headquarters, where he was interrogated about his intentions with the device and his own surname and was not allowed to call his father, according to media reports.
Comments