Well, yes it should have got their attention. But at no point did anyone at the school think it was a bomb. If they had, the school would have been evacuated.
By calling the police, all they managed to do was make the kid famous, rich and cultivate sympathethy for Muslims.
I don’t think they knew what to make of the situation.
Again, their concerns were what Ahmed might do with it, like leave it somewhere, in which case it wouldn’t matter if it was real or not. As someone said, airport security would have something to say about it.
And it’s not like Ahmed didn’t really think that it looked like a clock to him, as he told his suspicious teacher and has maintained. He said he took steps to make it not look a like a threat and “not that much suspicious.” Doesn’t sound like he was telling the truth. And his lack of forthrightness, which one expects from teens when confronted on something, concerned them. While there’s no evidence of it yet, it does sound like possibly a hoax his family, and particularly his father, was behind. Despite their claims that Mohamed was “severely traumatized,” Ahmed is seen everywhere with broad smiles, like he can hardly contain himself. Interestingly he smiles at certain points during interviews, and he lapses into disjointed English at parts of his story where his own actions might be in doubt, including where he talks of making the project look “not that much suspicious,” and some other parts that I saw in another interview with him.
I also think it was known that his father is an in-your-face Islamist, who among other things, went to Florida to debate the Koran-burning pastor.
Then there was the matter of the daughter accused of making a bomb threat. Was there something to that? Maybe the daughter indeed did because her father has encouraged his children to boldly advocate for Islam.
Although it’s not certain either way yet, it sounds like these were a Muslim family not content with quietly living in America without trying to openly impose Islam on it.