The family of Ahmed “clock kid” Mohamed, the 14-year-old freshman who was arrested and suspended for bringing to school what looked to teachers and police like a hoax bomb, is demanding a total of $15 million from the city of Irving and the Irving Independent School District (ISD) — or else they’ll file a lawsuit.
Via Fox4:
The family wants $10 million from the City of Irving and $5 million from Irving ISD for damages it claims Ahmed and the family suffered after the teen was arrested. The family also wants an apology from the two entities.
Damages? It will be interesting to hear what damages these folks suffered. From what I’ve seen, they’ve only profited greatly from their little PR stunt.
In the wake of the clock controversy, Mohamed and his family were given all sorts of favorable press. They were also showered with gifts, offers and invitations from sympathetic CEOs, academics, heads of state and other assorted bigwigs.
- Carl Bass, the CEO of the software company Autodesk, invited Ahmed to “come hang out” at the company so they could “make something new together.”
- Alexis Ohanian, one of the co-founders of Reddit, wanted to introduce him to some of their “friends in science.”
- Foursquare said it stood with Mohamed “because we love to make things too.” The company encouraged him to “never stop inventing the future.”
- The hashtag “#IStandWithAhmed” took off on Twitter and among the many offers the teen received was an internship from Twitter.
- Ahmed was offered a free circuit kit from 123D Circuits “so he could continue to build things.”
- Astrophysicist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein invited him to tour MIT and said that he was her “ideal student” because he was “a creative, independent thinker.”
- Former NASA astronaut Daniel Tani gave Mohamed a NASA shirt that was worn in space.
- Homer Hickam, a former NASA engineer, was part of a group that offered Ahmed a scholarship to Space Camp USA.
- Ahmed got a scholarship offer from the New European College, an international business school.
- R&B artist Ne-Yo tweeted that Mohamed should let him know if he had aspirations of getting into the music industry.
- The teen’s family announced in October that he accepted a scholarship to attend school in Qatar.
- Mohamed was invited to visit the UN in New York by the delegations of more than 20 countries, his family said. Spokeswoman Fatima Tekko said, “[Ahmed] is very excited and is looking forward to it.”
- Mohamed and family were “overjoyed” at the chance to meet with genocidal war criminal Bashir in Sudan.
- Mohamed and family were personally invited by the president of the United States to attend the White House’s “astronomy night” where he was able to meet the president.
That is an impressive list of perks the young “whiz kid” was awarded for spending a couple of minutes transferring a Radio Shack clock into a briefcase pencil box, taking it to school, and defying his teacher’s order to put it away because it looked like a bomb.
But these are high-rolling opportunists — so now they’re demanding $15 million from the city of Irving, Texas.
If there’s any way the city can make the family guarantee that they’ll stay in Qatar, it might almost be worth it.