14-year-old Texas boy suspended over clock to switch schools

IRVING, Texas -- The 14-year-old boy who was arrested after bringing a homemade clock to his high school will be transferring to another school.

Ahmed Mohamed was arrested at MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas on Monday after a teacher thought a clock he brought to school was a dangerous device.

His father, a Sudanese immigrant, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, now says Ahmed is picking a new school -- and the family is looking at options both inside and outside of the country.

Ahmed was pulled from class Monday and taken to a detention center after showing the digital clock to teachers at his school in Irving. Ahmed was still suspended by school officials. "I built the clock to impress my teacher, but when I showed it to her, she thought it was a threat to her. So it was really sad she took the wrong impression of it," Ahmed said at a press conference.

Ahmed's father emigrated from Sudan and believes his son was targeted because of his ethnicity and religion.

As word spread that Ahmed Mohamed had been placed in handcuffs after coming to class with the clock that officials at his suburban Dallas school thought resembled a bomb, the teen became a star on social media, with the hashtag #IStandWithAhmed tweeted more than 1 million times by Wednesday night. Many also took to social media to criticize police and officials at MacArthur High School, suspecting them of overreacting because of the boy's religion. Officials say the boy's religion was not a factor.

Encouragement poured in from across the nation for a 14-year-old Muslim boy whose homemade electronic clock led to his detention and suspension from school, with President Barack Obama, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and a NASA scientist among those offering support.

Irving Police Chief Larry Boyd said the clock looked "suspicious in nature," but said there was no evidence the boy meant to cause alarm at school. Boyd considers the case closed.

He said the reaction to the clock "would have been the same regardless" of Ahmed's religion. "We live in an age where you can't take things like that to school," Boyd said.

Related Story: Muslim boy, 14, arrested for making clock mistaken for bomb in Texas