A boy, 14, identified as Ahmed Mohamed has been arrested by the police in Irvine, Texas, USA, for bringing a homemade clock that the police say looks like a bomb to school.
According to a local television station the Dallas Morning News, Mohamed “makes his own radios” and is interested in making simple electrical devices.
The TV station revealed that on this occasion the MacArthur High School student brought his invention, a “simple device, created from a circuit board and a power supply wired to a digital display, all strapped inside a case with a tiger hologram on the front”, to show his engineering teacher.
The engineering teacher was said to have told the boy to hide the device in his bag from other teachers. When he attended another class, the clock reportedly beeped which made his English teacher report him to the school principal.
The principal reportedly came to the boy’s class with policemen who led him away in handcuffs.
Mohamed told the station that the policemen asked him why he was trying to make a bomb and the principal threatened to expel him if he did not admit to trying to make a bomb.
While speaking to the Dallas Morning News, Ahmed’s father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, says his son suffered “Because his name is Mohamed and because of September 11th.”
Local police say the boy, who is still serving a three-day suspension from school, may still be charged with making a “hoax bomb”.