9th-Grader May Face Charges After Homemade Clock Mistaken For Bomb

New submitter bengoerz writes: 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed was led away from MacArthur High School in handcuffs and faces possible charges after teachers, school administrators, and police in Irving, Texas mistook his homemade clock for a bomb. The device — a circuit board, power supply, and digital display wired together inside a pencil box — was confiscated by a teacher after the alarm sounded in class. Despite telling everyone who would listen that his device was just a clock, Ahmed was confronted by four police officers, suspended for three days, and threatened with expulsion unless he made a written statement, before eventually being transported to a juvenile detention center to meet his parents.

Comments

Gee-zus

[rmdingler]

I started reading....

Please don't be a Arab-sounding name. Shit!

Please don't be in Texas. Fock!

Sigh... well played, stereotype, well played.

Re:Gee-zus

[Anonymous Coward]

Macarthur High School, Irving, TX reviews. Sounds like a terrible place to try to learn.

"At least half of the teachers should not be teaching kids EVER."

"Only by threatening to have them arrested. Kids are afraid to take AP classes because they aren't learning anything. They are only reading and taking notes. No instruction at all."

"My kids hate this school now and would much rather move if we were able."

"No it's a breeding ground for bullying, fighting and rudeness. The teachers stoop to a child's level to treat them with absolute disrespect."

"This school has gone from a 10 to a 1 in a matter of 9 months. I blame this 100% on the new Principal. This school is run like a military camp, with horrible food, unrealistic rules, and all 'fun' activities taken away. They are threatened with court and jail if they are tardy. Theft is so rampant at this school that it is unbelievable. AP History teachers give several hours of notes each night, instead of actually TEACHING while they are in class, which means no time for their core class homework or sports. They refuse, and I mean refuse to let your child out of AP, even when you have signed several slips for this to happen. Teachers obviously set you up to fail. They just don't care. This is true for 50% of the teachers at this school. And don't report bullying. Your child will be blamed instead of the child who is actually doing the bullying. And the parent is put down as well. We just don't report theft or bullying anymore. Not worth the humiliation and disrespect that the 'fine' staff at Mac makes sure you endure."

Re:Gee-zus

[nedlohs]

They are not "intermingled". The quoted reviews were all on one day in May 2015. The glowing 5-star reviews are from 2013 and earlier.

Now that could mean the "This school has done from a 10 to 1 in a matter of 9 months" comment is correct. Or maybe someone got pissed off and wrote a bunch of negative reviews all at once. I'd put my money on the second, though this news article is some evidence for the former I guess.

Who to contact...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's how to reach out to the Irving ISD superintendent to let him know what you think:

Jose Parra
Superintendent of Schools
972-600-5001
jparra@irvingisd.net

Pirates of the Caribbean?

[Anonymous Coward]

These are quit possibly the stupidest teachers, principals, and cops I've ever seen.

Email the school and let them know what you think

[Anonymous Coward]

Recipients: dacummings@irvingisd.net, othomas@irvingisd.net, mespino@irvingisd.net, sheller@irvingisd.net, awong@irvingisd.net, psmith@irvingisd.net
(from http://www.irvingisd.net/domain/2031 )

Email message:

To whom it concerns,

I had to read this article about a boy who tinkers with electronics as a hobby:
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/northwest-dallas-county/headlines/20150915-irving-9th-grader-arrested-after-taking-homemade-clock-to-school-so-you-tried-to-make-a-bomb.ece

I hope it is not standard practice of the school to traumatize kids the way this has been dealt with. Kids who take up interests in sciences should be supported. Not jailed.

America land of the free... yeah right

[Zubinix]

Oh fuck. America land of the big white racist cunts.

Re:Why didn't his teacher stand up for him?

[Idarubicin]

Presumably he made this for a class, and if so, why didn't that teacher stand up for him and tell them it was for his class?

And if it wasn't for a class or club or something, that does admittedly seem a bit suspicious.

He brought it to school to show the teacher in his engineering class, and then kept it out of sight in his bag. The alarm on the clock beeped during an English class later in the day, so he showed the project to his English teacher after class by way of explanation.

The only obviously wrong thing he did was (presumably inadvertently) let the alarm go off during a class. If he were a kid with a cell phone, the teacher would confiscate the phone for the rest of the class and possibly assign some other standard, trivial punishment. And that would be fine. Instead, we have a hopelessly irrational overreaction, almost certainly enhanced by the kid's race.

Re: Stupid people are stupid

[unami]

well, here's the principal: dacummings@irvingisd.net and here the link to the administrative staff page: http://www.irvingisd.net/domai... have fun, and don't forget to write them about their 1600 cc-cameras. from an european perspective this sounds like an orwellian prison, but maybe this is normal for the U.S. way to go, educating children towards acceptance for the surveilance state.

Irving, Texas

[PopeRatzo]

What do you expect? It was Texas, and they weren't sure what a clock could be used for.

Let me introduce to you to the principal of the school:

‘It looks like a movie bomb to me.’

Now let me introduce you to the mayor of Irving, Texas:

...this summer when Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne became a national celebrity in anti-Islamic circles, fueling rumors in speeches that the religious minority was plotting to usurp American laws.

Finally, let's let Irving, Texas Police Office James McLellan speak for himself:

“It could reasonably be mistaken as a device if left in a bathroom or under a car,” McLellan said. “The concern was, what was this thing built for? Do we take him into custody?”

Get that? It's a clock and Officer McLellan wasn't sure "what was this thing built for"? So they took him into custody.

They suspended the kid for three days.

Jesus wept. Texas is a shithole.

Help Irving High start a STEM program

[jddj]

Noted on Twitter last night that many people have found inexpensive electronic clock kits, and are sending them to Irving High to help the teachers learn about what clocks are, that they're not terribly threatening, and to help their kids learn to build them.

That address is:

Irving High School
900 N O Connor Rd
Irving, TX 75061