The USA president and the founder of Facebook have both pledged support for a boy who was arrested over bomb fears after he made his own clock and took it to school.
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“Cool clock, Ahmed”, Obama tweeted about Ahmed Mohamed, 14.
Obama praised Ahmed Mohamed, saying more kids should be inspired to like science. “It’s what makes America great”, the President tweeted.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest addressed the controversy during a briefing Wednesday and said Mohamed has been invited to the White House for an astronomy night.
Officials at MacArthur High School in Irving suspended freshman Ahmed Mohamed, 14, and called police Monday after determining that his invention looked like a bomb.
One image that was posted is a revised version of the NASA logo – the teen was wearing a NASA T-shirt when he was detained by police. “Keep building”.
On Monday, Ahmed showed the clock to his engineering teacher and then another teacher, after the clock, which was in his backpack, beeped during class. The second teacher told him that it looked like a bomb, the newspaper reported.
Inventors are tinkerers. They build things without obvious utility, they take things apart and put them back together, they make things just to see if it’s possible to make them, and they show off their latest creations to the people around them. It was really easy.
A 14-year-old Muslim boy became a sensation on social media Wednesday after word spread that he had been placed in handcuffs and suspended for coming to school with a homemade clock that teachers thought resembled a bomb. “We need people like him in this country”.
Ahmed Mohamed hoped to impress teachers with his clock, but it didn’t go down so well. “He is an excited kid who is very bright and wants to share it with his teachers”. The school did not even bother to call the parents of this minor child.
A photo of Mohamed in handcuffs provided by his sister has been retweeted over 3,000 times. A few hours later, the student said the school’s principal and resource officer pulled him out of class to question him.
School district spokeswoman Lesley Weaver declined to confirm the suspension, citing privacy laws.
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Police spokesman James McLellan said there was “no information that [Ahmed] claimed it was a bomb” and that “he kept maintaining it was a clock, but there was no broader explanation”. “But because his name is Mohamed and because of September 11, I think my son got mistreated”.
