The Slatest

You Be the Judge: Does This Look Like a Clock or a Bomb?

Ahmed Mohamed’s device.

Irving Police Department

According to a press release issued by the Irving, Texas police department, the device pictured above is what 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed brought to school on Monday before being questioned by school officials and then arrested by police officers who thought it might be a fake bomb. (Mohamed and his family say it’s a homemade digital clock; it does resemble the items pictured in DIY clock tutorials and a Dallas Morning News reporter who visited the family’s home wrote that Mohamed’s room is filled with equipment for use in electronics experiments.) The teen was arrested on suspicion of having created a “hoax bomb,” but police have dropped the case after concluding that there is “no evidence to support the perception he intended to create alarm.”