Ahmed Mohamed's arrest led to a chorus of big names voicing support for the 14-year-old engineer, and on Wednesday, the teenager’s family responded by serving up a slice of gratitude.
Ahmed’s parents offered pizza to reporters who were gathered outside the Mohameds' Irving, Texas, home awaiting a press conference on Wednesday, NBC 5’s Ken Kalthoff tweeted.
The teen, who is Muslim, was arrested Monday and suspended from MacArthur High School, in Irving, after his homemade clock was mistaken for a bomb.
"I built the clock to impress my teacher, but when I showed it to her, she thought it was a threat to her,” Ahmed said in an interview aired by Fox News. “It was really sad that she took the wrong impression from it and I got arrested for it later that day."
Since Monday, an outpouring of support and encouragement for Ahmed has flooded social media accounts, including tweets from President Obama and Hillary Clinton, and a Facebook post from Mark Zuckerberg. In the press conference, the teen thanked his supporters for taking his side, saying he plans to keep inventing and hopefully will attend MIT someday.
The chances of that are looking pretty good. During an interview on Wednesday, Ahmed was introduced to Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, an astrophysicist at MIT, who invited the budding engineer to visit the school, telling him he was her "ideal student."
"A creative, independent thinker like you is the kind of person who should be becoming a physicist," Prescod-Weinstein said. "As a theoretical physicist, I would love it if you took an interest in the mathematical side, although you’re clearly very adept with your hands and at building things.”
Keep on inventing, Ahmed!
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