Earlier this year, we told you about Ahmed Mohamed, a teenager from the Dallas/Fort Worth area who was falsely accused of bringing a “hoax bomb” to school–when in reality, it was just a clock. Well, last week, another Metroplex teenager found himself staring down the barrel of false accusations that he endangered public safety by supposedly having an explosive device. As a result of a classmate’s sick idea of a joke, a 12-year-old could potentially have his life ruined.
Last Friday, Armaan Singh Sarai’s parents were alarmed when he didn’t come home from Nicholls Junior High School in Arlington. When they called the school, the principal told them that Armaan had been taken into custody, but didn’t know where he’d been taken. After several more calls, they learned that Armaan was being held at a juvenile detention center on charges of making a terroristic threat.
Armaan later told The Dallas Morning News that a classmate in his pre-AP history class joked that Armaan’s backpack looked a lot like a bomb–and then told their teacher that Armaan actually had a bomb. Watch here.
Armaan’s backpack is a “power bag” with a built-in charger for a cell phone. After a test on Thursday, Armaan’s classmate joked that the backpack looked a lot like a bomb. The next day, that same classmate said that he was going to tell the teacher that Armaan had a bomb. Armaan didn’t think anything of it at first, “so I started laughing and he started laughing.” However, a few minutes later, police swarmed into the room, grabbed him, and took him outside. They then evacuated the classroom to examine his backpack.
After police questioned Armaan, they took him away in handcuffs. According to police, while they determined there was no bomb, they still had to take Armaan into custody because bomb hoaxes are in and of themselves a serious threat to public safety. He spent three days in a detention center while a judge reviewed his case. He was then suspended from school for another three days, and is currently on house arrest while awaiting a court date. He could potentially be charged with a felony–which would all but end his dreams of becoming a mechanical engineer.
Police spokesman Christopher Cook defended his department’s handling of the incident, saying that “people have got to learn that you cannot make these types of threats,” hoaxes or not, due to the alarm they cause. The Arlington Independent School District also defended its handling of the incident. However, Armaan’s family thinks the manner in which this was handled was grossly unfair. His older brother, Aksh, says that if Armaan had really pulled a stunt like this, they would have let him rot in the detention center “so he could learn his lesson.”
Police say that Armaaan confessed that the whole thing was a hoax. But I find that hard to believe, given that Armaan has a congenital heart condition. He has already had to have three open-heart surgeries even though he is only 12 years old.
Armaan’s family believes that there’s at least one disturbing parallel to Ahmed’s case–they think there is racial discrimination afoot. Armaan’s cousin, Ginee Haer, said as much in a Facebook post.
Sikhs are frequently mistaken for Muslims, and have thus been targeted for the same kind of bigotry that Muslims have had to endure in recent years. I’m not sure that there’s a racial factor here. But even if there is no discrimination in this case, we should be very concerned that police don’t seem to be making any effort to investigate the family’s claims that Armaan was the victim of a cruel prank. You mean to tell me that a 12-year-old with a serious heart problem would deliberately subject himself to the emotional trauma of going to a juvenile detention center by falsely claiming he had a bomb? It’s simply incredible that no one in Arlington seems to have the professional skepticism to take a long, hard look at Armaan’s classmate.
From where I’m sitting, there was a threat to public safety at that middle school last week. But the wrong person is facing the music here. Sounds like you can add this to the lengthy list of cases where disabled and special-needs people get the shaft from the criminal-justice system.
