The “clock kid” from Texas who was wrongly arrested when a homemade clock he brought to school was mistaken for a bomb is now seeking damages for the incident that put him and his family in the national spotlight.
A lawyer representing Ahmed Mohamed sent two letters, one to the school and one to the Irving, Texas city hall, demanding a total of $15 million and apologies from the school district, Mayor Beth Van Duyne and Police Chief Larry Boyd to avoid a civil rights lawsuit.
The letter said that on Sept. 14, Mohamed’s teacher mistook his clock for a bomb and called the police, who arrested him before realizing the young engineering enthusiast’s device was not dangerous.
“Throughout the on-campus detention and interrogation — which was recorded on the iPhone of the one female officer present during the interrogation – Ahmed constantly was pressured to sign a written statement admitting that he intended to bring a ‘hoax bomb’ to school,” the letter reads.
The letter chastised the teachers and policemen who put Mohamed through the situation, in part for not realizing that he must have been “scared to death” during the whole ordeal.
“The detention, interrogation, search of Ahmed’s belongings, and the arrest all occurred despite there being no reasonable suspicion to believe that Ahmed had committed or was about to commit any crime,” it said.
Mohamed’s family relocated to Qatar after the media frenzy that followed the incident.
Twenty-nine members of Congress penned a letter earlier in November urging Attorney General Loretta Lynch to investigate Mohamed’s treatment on racial and religious grounds.
“Reports surrounding the incident strongly suggest that Ahmed Mohamed was systematically profiled based on his faith and ethnicity,” they wrote. “This incident highlights an alarming trend in the profiling of Muslim-Americans not only by law enforcement, but in our society as a whole.”
Read both letters below:
2018.11.23 Irving ISD Demand Letter by Avi Selk
2015.11.23 City of Irving Demand Letter by Avi Selk
