President Obama may have invited Ahmed Mohamed to bring his now-famous homemade clock to the White House — but the high schooler is going to have to get it back from the cops first.
Mohamed’s family has hired lawyers to get it back after police seized it during his wrongful arrest earlier this month, according to a Wednesday report by NBC News.
Mohamed, 14, was arrested at his high school in a Dallas suburb of Irving, Texas earlier this month when police mistakenly thought his clock, which he brought to school to impress his teacher, was a bomb.
Afterward, Mohamed received invitations to Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Texas at Austin, and Facebook. He also got an invitation to go to the White House from President Obama:
Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It’s what makes America great.
— President Obama (@POTUS) September 16, 2015
Two lawyers from Dallas had been hired “to pursue Ahmed’s legal rights and regain his science project from the Irving Police Department,” according to a statement Wednesday from the family, as cited by NBC.
Ahmed and his two siblings were also removed from the district and homeschooled, “because of religious persecution,” the statement said, according to NBC.