There will be no charges against 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed, the Muslim boy who was mistakenly arrested by Texas police because he was thought to have brought a hoax bomb to school.
According to BBC, Ahmed, whose family hails from Sudan, brought a homemade clock, but school officials thought otherwise and then alerted the police. He was subsequently handcuffed, detained and fingerprinted by the authorities, but the police released Ahmed on the same day after they were able to determine there was no threat.
"I built a clock to impress my teacher but when I showed it to her she thought it was a threat to her. I'm very sad that she got the wrong impression of it," said Ahmed. The BBC further reported that the teenager is planning to transfer schools as a result of the incident.
Meanwhile, President Barack Obama sent a message to Ahmed via his Twitter. He also asked the boy to visit him and bring his clock at the White House. "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," Obama wrote.
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.
— President Obama (@POTUS) September 16, 2015
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was also impressed by Ahmed's ingenuity. He posted his invite for the teenager to visit him at the Facebook headquarters. "Having the skill and ambition to build something cool should lead to applause, not arrest. The future belongs to people like Ahmed," Zuckerberg wrote. "Ahmed, if you ever want to come by Facebook, I'd love to meet you. Keep building."
You’ve probably seen the story about Ahmed, the 14 year old student in Texas who built a clock and was arrested when he...
Posted by Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday, September 16, 2015
Further investigations led police to conclude that there will be no charges against Ahmed, according to Jezebel. "The follow-up investigation revealed the device apparently was a homemade experiment, and there's no evidence to support the perception he intended to create alarm," said Irving Police Chief Larry Boyd in press conference, according to Dallas News.
"Of course we've seen across our country horrific things happen, so we have to err on the side of caution," Boyd added further.
"He's a very smart, brilliant boy and he said he just wanted to show himself to the world," Ahmed's father told BBC.
