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Oregon schoolboy suspended after teacher mistakes homemade charger for a bomb

School authorities decided Levi Frunk, 15, had 'disrupted school' and barred him from playing in a homecoming football match

Tim Walker
US Correspondent
Tuesday 27 September 2016 18:08 BST
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Frunk admitted that, to the untrained eye, his homemade charger might resemble an improvised explosive device
Frunk admitted that, to the untrained eye, his homemade charger might resemble an improvised explosive device

An Oregon teenager was suspended from school after bringing in a homemade phone charger, which a teacher mistook for a bomb.

Home electronics enthusiast Levi Frunk, a 15-year-old student at Sandy High School near Portland, left his phone charging on the DIY device in a locker room during weight training with the school’s football squad.

When his football coach spotted the charger, he believed it was an explosive device, called security and began evacuating the area – until Frunk realised what had happened and explained that the contraption was harmless.

Nevertheless, school authorities decided he had violated a rule in the student handbook that forbids “disrupting school” and suspended him for a day and a half. He was also barred from playing in a homecoming football match.

Frunk seemed to go along with the school’s decision. “I’m a little upset I can’t play in my game,” he told KATU, “but it was pretty fair.”

His sister Kiki Stonebraker said the charger was not out of the ordinary for her brother, who is keen on technology. “He’s super smart. He’s always built things, he’s always taking things apart, she said. “Growing up with him, that stuff was laying around our house all the time.”

The incident recalls the case of Ahmed Mohamed, the student whose homemade clock was also mistaken for a bomb by teachers at his Texas high school in 2015. Unlike Frunk, Mohamed was handcuffed and questioned by police for ninety minutes.

The case, which to many smacked of Islamophobia, earned the 14-year-old Mohamed an invitation to the White House.

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