sensation after a Texas teacher mistook his homemade
clock for a bomb has been withdrawn from his school, local
media reported Tuesday.
Ahmed Mohamed, 14, won invitations to the White House,
Google and Facebook last week amid a surge of public
support for the aspiring inventor who was taken away from
school in handcuffs.
"Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We
should inspire more kids like you to like science. It's what
makes America great," Obama tweeted hours after the story
broke.
Mohamed's father told the Dallas Morning News that all
three of the family's children are being withdrawn from the
Irving Independent School District.
"These kids aren't going to be happy there," Mohamed
Elhassan Mohamed told the paper.
The sudden attention, while welcome, has been
overwhelming for the family and Ahmed hasn't been eating
or sleeping well, his father said.
"It's torn the family, and makes us very confused,"
Mohamed said.
Plenty of schools have offered to take Ahmed, but his father
thinks a bit of a break is in order.
The family will be flying to New York on Wednesday after
receiving invitations to meet with dignitaries at the United
Nations.
They are also trying to get visas to take Ahmed on a
pilgrimage to Makkah.
"I ask Allah to bless this time," Mohamed said. "After that,
we'll see."
The son of Sudanese immigrants who live in a Dallas
suburb, the young robotics fan brought in a home-made
clock to impress a new teacher at MacArthur High School.
"It was really sad that she took the wrong impression of it
and I got arrested," he told reporters last week.
Local police insisted that Mohammed's ethnicity had
nothing to do with the decision to arrest him on suspicion of
bringing a hoax bomb to school. No charges were laid after
it was determined the teen had no malicious intent.
Along with the invitation to astronomy night at the White
House next month, Mohamed also got a scholarship to
NASA's Space Camp invitations to drive NASA's Opportunity
rover, tour MIT and intern at Twitter.
He posted a picture of himself visiting "amazing projects
and people" at Google's science fair on his Twitter account,
@IStandWithAhmed, Monday.
Arabnews
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