– ‘Suspicious device’ –
Police said Wednesday they have determined that Mohamed had no malicious intent and it was “just a naive set of circumstances.”
Irving police chief Larry Boyd insisted that Mohamed’s ethnicity had nothing to do with the response.
“Our reaction would have been the same either way. That’s a very suspicious device,” Boyd told reporters.
“We live in an age where you can’t take things like that to school.”
A school district spokeswoman also stood by the establishment’s response, telling reporters that anyone who saw the homemade clock would understand that “we were doing everything with an abundance of caution.”
A photo provided by police showed a flat, rectangular red digital clock face screwed into the dark plush interior of a silver case along with a circuit board and some wires.
“My son is a very brilliant boy,” Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed – who has run for president in Sudan – told CNN.