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Ahmed Mohamed will not be returning to his Texas high school after being put in handcuffs by police for having a “bomb,” which was actually a digital clock that the brilliant 14-year-old whipped together to show to his science teacher, the Huffington Post reports.
After the traumatic experience, which Ahmed said made him feel like a criminal, MacArthur High School in Irving said that it would “certainly welcome” the teen back, but Ahmed’s family said that there is no interest in returning the young boy there.
On Thursday Ahmed’s father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, said that Ahmed will be transferring, although the family is “still deciding where he will go next.”
Although the experience was horrifying for the young boy, as his older sister Ayisha Mohamed told the Associated Press, “It was a bad thing that turned into a blessing.”
Ahmed has received an onslaught of support online with the hashtags #IStandWithAhmed and #EngineersForAhmed. Facebook, Google, Twitter and Box reached out to the teen, NASA scientists have tweeted support to him and even President Barack Obama extended an invitation to the White House earlier this week.
https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/644193755814342656https://twitter.com/NASA/status/644236412473208833?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfwhttps://twitter.com/Astro_Tani/status/644239398993727488?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfwhttps://twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield/status/644177398553030656
According to HuffPost, school administrators have yet to apologize to Ahmed for the arrest but said that they “stand behind what the teacher did.” Ahmed’s three-day suspension for bringing the clock to school has also not been revoked.
“Even though that particular item did not pose an immediately dangerous situation to the school, we cannot allow items on campus that can be perceived to pose a threat,” a school spokeswoman told ABC News.
Read more at the Huffington Post and ABC News.