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14-Year-Old Arrested For Making Clock. Obama, Zuckerberg, NASA Offer Him Kudos.

byStorypickers
17th September 2015
3 minute read

In the United States, if a kid named Ahmed makes something with wires, it MUST be a bomb. This is the sad truth of the 21st century.

Ahmed Mohamed, a 14-year-old freshman, enjoys experimenting with machines and their parts.

His latest project was nothing but a ‘simple’ homemade clock and when he brought it to school to show his friends and teachers, he was promptly arrested.

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So here’s what happened:

During the English class at the MacArthur High School, Ahmed’s device which was kept in a pencil box beeped all of a sudden. When he showed it to his teacher, explaining it was a clock, she said she thought it looked like a bomb. A few hours later Ahmed found himself being questioned in a room with 4 cops, and then later in handcuffs on the way to a juvenile detention center. Not only that, the principal suspended him for 3 days and had defended the decision to get the cops involved.

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On Monday:

A photo of Mohamed standing in handcuffs while wearing a NASA T-shirt was retweeted thousands of times in a matter of hours.

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On Tuesday:

Ahmed was at home because he was told not to return until the police decided whether to charge him for what they called a hoax bomb.

 

On Wednesday:

The police confirmed that Mohamed had no malicious intent. But by then, #IStandWithAhmed became the top trending hashtag on Twitter. Ahmed was a hero and the officials who called his clock a fake bomb were a joke.

But the best part is, Ahmed was invisible on social media before he became an online sensation. He had no Twitter account, no Facebook, and no Instagram account. So his sisters set him up on Twitter as @IStandWithAhmed — a slogan that the world had given the boy as his story spread overnight.

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#IStandWithAhmed:

The #IStandWithAhmed hashtag has been riding high on Twitter for some time now. Ahmed has been receiving an enormous amount of support and well wishes on the social network.

1. People from India to Russia to Australia praised Ahmed online by the time Mark Zuckerberg invited the boy to tour his company

[cjtoolbox name=’zuck ahmed’ ] [/cjtoolbox]

 

2. Mr. Obama was almost late

At a news conference on Wednesday afternoon, Ahmed said he was going to the White House.

 

3. This is what Hillary Clinton tweeted

 

4. Twitter has even offered the boy an internship

 

5. Google told Ahmed he was welcome this weekend at the Google Science Fair

 

6. Oh, WAIT! Even NASA tweeted something

 

7. Tumblr founder David Karp also voiced his support.

 

8. Happy?

 

Later, Ahmed took to Twitter and expressed how overwhelmed and surprised he felt from the outpouring.

He also tweeted this photo of himself on the way to his lawyer’s office.

It’s sad, but maybe we live in an age where we can’t take clocks to school.

News Source: The Times Of India

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