On September 14, 2015, 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed was arrested at MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas, for bringing a disassembled digital clock to school. The incident ignited allegations of racial profiling and Islamophobia from many media sources and commentators.
The episode arose when Mohamed reassembled the parts of a digital clock in an pencil case and brought it to school to show his teachers. His English teacher thought the device resembled a bomb, confiscated it, and reported him to the principal. The local police were called, and they questioned him for an hour and a half. He was handcuffed, taken into custody and transported to a juvenile detention facility, where he was fingerprinted and his mug shot was taken. He was then released to his parents. According to local police, they arrested him because they initially suspected he may have purposely caused a bomb scare. The case was not pursued further by the juvenile justice authorities, but he was suspended from school.
Following the incident, the police determined Mohamed had no malicious intent, and he was not charged with any crime. News of the incident went viralinitially on Twitterwith allegations by commentators that the actions of the school officials and police were due to their stereotyping of Mohamed based on his Sudanese ancestry and Muslim faith. Afterwards, U.S. President Barack Obama as well as other politicians, activists, technology company executives, and media personalities commented about the incident. Many of them praised Mohamed for his ingenuity and creativity, and he was invited to participate in a number of high-profile events related to encouraging youth interest in science and technology. Although Mohamed was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing in the final police investigation, he became the subject of conspiracy theories – many of them contradictory, citing no evidence, and conflicting with established facts – which claimed that the incident was a deliberate hoax.
On November 23, 2015, Ahmed's family threatened to sue the City of Irving and the school district for civil rights violations and physical and mental anguish unless they received written apologies and compensation of $15 million. This lawsuit was dismissed in May 2017 for lack of evidence. The family also sued conservative talk show hosts Glenn Beck, Ben Shapiro, and another Fox News commentator for lesser amounts on the grounds of defamation of character. Both cases were dismissed with prejudice for First Amendment free speech reasons. In late 2015, his family decided to accept a scholarship from the Qatar Foundation and move to Qatar.
Incident
Background
At the time of the incident on Monday, September 14, 2015, Mohamed was fourteen years old and a high school freshman. In interviews with local media, Mohamed said that he wanted to show the engineering teacher at school what he had done over the weekend; he had taken apart a clock and rebuilt it inside a pencil case that resembled a small briefcase. His father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, said that he had driven him to school that morning and encouraged him to show his technological skills.
In an interview on Al Jazeera's Ali Velshi on Target, Mohamed said the clock was "built from scrap around the house" and that "some of the boards were already manufactured". He told Larry Wilmore on The Nightly Show that it took him only "10 or 20 minutes" to put it together and that he had built more complicated items in the past but that the clock was simple, using some parts that were "scrapped off" so that it was easier. According to the initial report in The Dallas Morning News, he had done this "before bed on Sunday [September 13, 2015]".
Ralph Kubiak, Mohamed's seventh-grade history teacher, said that Mohamed was known as an electronics enthusiast with a history of being disciplined for using a handmade remote control to cause a classroom projector to malfunction on command. Mohamed was also noted for making a battery charger to help recharge the cellphone of a school tutor.Washington Post, Clock kid keeps ticking – and so does media interest The Dallas Morning News commented, "[s]ome of these creations looked much like the infamous clock – a mess of wires and exposed circuits stuffed inside a hinged case, perhaps suspicious to some." According to The Guardian, everybody in middle school knew Mohamed as "the kid who makes crazy contraptions" and who fixed electronics classmates brought to him, earning him the nickname "Inventor Kid".
According to the Dallas Morning News, Mohamed was suspended twice while in middle school, once for blowing soap bubbles in the bathroom and another time for defending himself during a fight in the hallway. During that time, Mohamed "was complaining of bullying – not just by students, but by staff", reportedly for being Muslim. After reviewing a letter of support from the same family friend and meeting with Mohamed, the school principal overturned that suspension.
Clock and arrest Mohamed said he brought the clock to school because he "wanted to impress all of his teachers". His engineering teacher, upon seeing the clock said, "That's really nice", but advised him to keep the device in his backpack for the rest of the school day. Mohamed, however, later plugged it in during his English class and set a time on the clock. When the clock alarm started beeping, the English teacher requested to see it, and said, "Well, it looks like a bomb. Don't show it to anyone else." In an interview posted on KXAS-TV (NBC 5), Mohamed said he "closed it with a cable ... 'cause I didn't want to lock it to make it seem like a threat, so I just used a simple cable so it won't look that much suspicious."
After the English teacher confiscated the clock and reported him to the school principal's office, the police were called. The principal and a police officer then took him out of class and led him to a room where four other officers were waiting. Police indicated that he was interrogated only in order to clarify his intentions when he brought the clock to school. According to Mohamed, he was not allowed to contact his family during the questioning and he was threatened by the principal with expulsion unless he would sign a written statement. After interrogating him for about an hour and a half, he was taken out of the school in handcuffs and into police custody. Following his arrival at a juvenile detention center, Mohamed was fingerprinted, required to take a mug shot, and further questioned before being released to his parents.
Police determined that he had no malicious intent, and he was not charged with any crime. Irving Police Chief Larry Boyd said that "the officers pretty quickly determined that they weren't investigating an explosive device", and that Mohammed was arrested over the prospect that it was a "hoax bomb". Under Texas law, it is illegal to possess a "hoax bomb" with an intent to "make another believe that the hoax bomb is an explosive or incendiary device" or to "cause [an] alarm or reaction of any type by an official of a public safety agency or volunteer agency organized to deal with emergencies". After releasing Mohamed, police continued to question his clock's purpose, saying, "He kept maintaining it was a clock, but there was no broader explanation."
Some of Mohamed's teachers at Sam Houston Middle School were surprised to learn that staff at the high school called police, as they have known Mohamed to bring more elaborate devices to their school. His supporters have speculated that the questioning and subsequent transfer by police to a juvenile center exemplifies Islamophobia in the United States.
Suspension Mohamed was suspended from school for three days.Glenza, J., and Woolf, N., Texas Schoolboy Arrested over Clock to Visit Obama as Authorities Defend Action, The Guardian, September 17, 2015. MacArthur High School's director of communications said he was welcome to return after his suspension.
Lawsuits His family sent a demand letter on November 23, 2015, saying they would file a lawsuit if they did not receive $15 million in financial compensation and a public apology from the City of Irving and the Irving School District. He later withdrew from the school.
His family then filed a lawsuit against the City of Irving and the school district on August 8, 2016. The lawsuit alleged that officers racially profiled him and treated him differently on the basis of his race and ethnicity, starting with when “Yep, that’s who I thought it was,” with the implication being that they expected a student with a Muslim name to be the culprit. The lawsuit continued that the officers "pulled A.M. forcefully out of his chair, yanked his arms up behind his back so far that his right hand touched the back of his neck, causing a lot of pain". On May 19, 2017, a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit, saying the plaintiff presented no facts demonstrating intentional discrimination against Mohamed.
Mohamed Mohamed, on behalf of himself and Ahmed Mohamed, filed a defamation suit in Dallas County District Court on September 21, 2016. The named defendants were The Blaze, Inc, Glenn Beck, Center for Security Policy, Jim Hanson, Fox Television Stations, LLC, Ben Ferguson, Ben Shapiro, and Beth Van Duyne. Case No. DC-16-12579. The Mohameds were represented by Susan E. Hutchison of Hutchison & Stoy, PLLC.
A hearing was held on December 16, 2016, during which claims against the defendants KDFW Fox 4 and Ben Ferguson were dismissed with prejudice (meaning the suit could not be re-filed, though the decision could be appealed). In January 2017, the judge granted Hanson's and CSP's motion to dismiss (releasing TheBlaze, Glenn Beck, Jim Hanson and the Center for Security Policy), and in February 2017 the judge granted Shapiro's motion to dismiss. Legal fees were awarded to the defendants, and an appeal by Mohamed of the dismissals and legal fee awards was denied in 2018.
On March 13, 2018, a federal lawsuit filed by Ahmed Mohamed's father against the Irving Independent School District, the city of Irving, and several specific individuals, was dismissed with prejudice and with the court ordering Mohamed's family to bear all the costs of the lawsuit.
Immediate responses
School district
School district spokeswoman Lesley Weaver said, "We are never going to take any chances for any of their safety [...] It doesn't matter what child would have brought a suspicious looking item. We still would have taken the same actions." She further said "If the family is willing to give us written permission, we would be happy to share with the public the other side of the story so they can understand the actions we took."
Irving's mayor
Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne defended the actions of the police and the Irving Independent School District, stating that they were following the procedure set when a "potential threat" is discovered. Van Duyne said that from the information she had seen, Mohammed had been "non-responsive" and "passive aggressive" in response to questions from police officers.
Van Duyne said there was one-sided reporting of the interaction between Mohammed and police, saying that they are unable to release records because Mohammed is a juvenile and his family has refused to allow it. According to The Dallas Morning News, Mohamed's family never received the request to release his records, because the school district mailed it to the wrong lawyer; the letter was later sent to the correct attorneys.
Ahmed Mohamed and his family
According to Mohamed, when questioned by the school staff as to whether he had tried to make a bomb, he said, "I told them no, I was trying to make a clock." He also questioned the fairness of the situation "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."