Irving Student Says He’s Falsely Accused of Making ‘Hoax Bomb’

A 14-year-old North Texas student and his family blame fear of Islam for his arrest on charges of making a “hoax bomb.”

Ahmed Mohamed, a freshman at Irving MacArthur High School, said he took an electronic clock he built over the weekend to school Monday morning to show his first period engineering teacher his skill with making things.”I wanted to start clean with the teacher by showing him my inventions and stuff,” he said.

Mohamed said problems arose when the clock rang in his back pack in class with a second teacher later in the day. He said he showed that teacher the device after other students had left the room.

“She said, ‘Well it looks like a bomb. Don’t show it to anyone else,’” he said. “And she decides to take it from me.

Mohamed said police handcuffed him and took him to Irving police headquarters for interrogation, fingerprints and mug shots. He said his family surname repeatedly came up in police questioning.

“I tried making a phone call to my father. They said, ‘You’re in the middle of an interrogation. You can’t have a phone call,'” he said. “I really don’t think it’s fair, because I brought something to school that wasn’t a threat to anyone. I didn’t do anything wrong. I just showed my teachers something and I end up being arrested later that day.”

His father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, said he drove his son to school Monday morning and encouraged him to demonstrate his gift for technology.

“We are in the melting pot,” the father said. “We are in the greatest country. We need this trouble not to hinder us, as Muslims, as Christians, as Jews, or whatever you are.”

Read More: Irving Student Says He’s Falsely Accused of Making ‘Hoax Bomb’ | NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth