This was the "pencil case" he put it in (the black one.) It looks exactly like a bomb briefcase from the movies.

From another article, when he first showed it to his engineering teacher, the teacher told him, "Don't show that to anyone else." The kid's stated intention was to show it off to his electronics teacher, which he did without incident. But having not gotten the actual reaction he wanted, he then showed it to his English teacher, who was the one who sent him to the principal's office.

The thing is, this is exactly the kind of thing my friends and I would have done. We were smart, and bored, and we occasionally fucked with our teachers because it was entertaining, especially when we knew they knew what we were doing, but their hands were tied because of policy.

My brother did a very similar thing with his physics teacher in HS.
The teacher had mentioned that he couldn't hear high pitched sounds. So my brother made a little box that emmitted a faily loud buzzing noise at a high pitch, and was setting it off during class.

The teacher didn't hear it, but the other students did. Some thought it was funny, and some thought it was stupid and annoying. It caused a disruption, so my brother turned it off. But the teacher knew something was going on. My brother got mildy scolded, but nobody called the police. He wasn't arrested and suspended.

I wasn't there for this clock incident. If the principal felt the kid was deliberately disrupting class, he deserves a detention. Arrest and suspension are way overboard.

Actually from one of the original stories

~

The reverse engineering article points out something very odd about the lad's Youtube interview with the Dallas Morning News. Here's the interview:



At 1:25, the kid says

The reverse engineering article asks, why was he concerned about it looking suspicious? He's describing his choice while building this thing.

The danger here is that I/we parse the worlds of a 14-year-old too closely. But he is also really specific about this detail, where there is no reason to get specific. Often, when you lie, you introduce unnecessary specifics.

I also find it interesting that he is constantly doubling down on he invented this thing. Even knowing he's in serious trouble, he never just stops and says hey I took apart a clock. I thought it would look cool with all the electronics exposed and the display mounted on the case lid.

I'd point out that he was describing past events after having been arrested. So he knows there was HUGE suspicion surrounding him. He's trying to paint himself in the best light, as we all do.

(the above was edited - i didn't realize it took me 10 minutes)

Oh, absolutely. The school should have realized that you don't play chicken with a teenager, because doubling-down is all most kids know how to do, whether out of panic or defiance or both. It's possible the school felt their hands were tied because of a shitty zero-tolerance policy, but still, they should have known how to quietly let this thing go.

Yeah, we had several instances of the "too high-pitched for adults to hear" prank. We also had a kid who figured out what kind of universal remote worked with the TVs in the school classrooms, and he would turn them on randomly from his backpack whenever it suited him.

When I was in 8th grade, I read the entirety of Johnny Tremain upside-down just to piss off a teacher. I told him that I had a rare form of dyslexia where instead of being flipped left-to-right, letters were flipped top-to-bottom, and that if he tried to make me read it right side up he was discriminating against my disability.

Oh, he loved you, I'm sure. LOL

I would want EVERY SINGLE TEACHER in EVERY situation to report this and for it to be addressed. When etc etc the knew it wasn't a bomb, I don't know. What to do from there ... something different, but we have these zero-tolerance policies and they dictate what must be done.

I'll just dump all these here. I call bullshit on the whole thing. Something doesn't add up right.

Times have changed. When I was in junior high, my woodshop teacher helped me build a working replica medieval crossbow. In New York state. Where crossbows were illegal at the time.

Only on TV do bombs have visual timers and beep. Real bombs don't waste time doing something so useless. How many adults cannot even understand that simplistic concept? How many adults know it is a bomb when nothing of bomb size and potential even exists in it? The teacher panicked due to ignorance and emotion. How long did it take for someone to finally act like an adult - and think?

I'm not saying what happened was right. But the child was accused of a bomb hoax, not of making a bomb.

Except he never hoaxed anyone either.

It wasn't a bomb, and never said it was, and when they described things he could have done to make it seem like a bomb, they were things he hadn't done.

Throw some wires and electronic parts in a box. That is a bomb or a hoax? Hoax was the ability of an adult (and her peers) to think like an adult. She made other involved adult (and police) into national jokes.

Nothing was right or wrong. Pathetic were so many adults who failed to think like adults. The kid remained suspended from school because a teacher and administration could not admit their ignorance and public humiliation? Who was the child here?