Obama Invites Texas Teen To White House After "Bomb" Clock Incident At School

The Grim Reefer writes: In a followup to this morning's story about the arrest of 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed for bringing a homemade clock to school that was mistaken for a bomb, President Obama has invited the teen to the White House via Twitter. The President tweeted: "Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It's what makes America great." The Irving Independent School District in Irving, Texas sent an email to parents about the incident asking students to: "immediately report any suspicious items and / or suspicious behavior."

Comments

Re:I wonder if they're going to use this as "proof

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if you noticed, but there's been a war on law enforcement recently.

This is a lie. You are a liar.

a certain movement that feels that police arresting inner city thugs is some sort of social justice travesty.

This is a lie. You are a liar.

Re:I wonder if they're going to use this as "proof

[bobbied]

It's a clock, not a bomb. I thought we already established that.

It was a clock built from a clock in a metal box that made noise when he plugged it in. I've seen pictures, it looked suspicious, no doubt about it. Scared the (blank) out of his teachers who called the police who detained the boy, briefly, in the interests of everybody's safety. I'm not saying this was or wasn't an over-reaction only that he was detained and has not been charged. Stuff happens, stupid stuff. It's part of life.

It's time for everybody here to grow up and see this for what it was and is, a simple misunderstanding because a kid was doing dangerous looking things.. He needs to take his toy home and grow up a bit...

Re:That's not a bomb, it's a clock!

[Dunbal]

Only if he put his hands up and/or stated "I can't breathe".

Re:I wonder if they're going to use this as "proof

[bobbied]

t's time for everybody here to grow up and see this for what it was and is, a simple misunderstanding because a kid was doing dangerous looking things.. He needs to take his toy home and grow up a bit...

Absolutely not.

He wasn't doing anything dangerous looking.

Oh yes it was, I've seen the pictures. The kid actually built something that COULD have triggered an explosive device out of an alarm clock. He may not have been building it to trigger a bomb, but that's EXACTLY what it could have done had it functioned as the kid said he intended. Now it wasn't connected to a bomb, but it WAS intended to function as a trigger.

I'm telling you, the authorities didn't run off half cocked here, there was probable cause as soon as somebody got the idea that this thing might be usable as a bomb trigger. How that happened is the real question.. Looking at the pictures of the device it is easy to see how it could be interpreted as a home made trigger worthy of a low budget Hollywood movie, so I'm not surprised the police reacted like they did...