MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — FBI agents foiled a terrorist attack by a teenager on the Mall of America after monitoring him for nearly two years and eventually providing him with the assault rifle he planned to use, authorities said Wednesday.
The 18-year-old had been on the FBI’s radar since December 2024, when he began exchanging messages with a confidential informant. A criminal complaint says he initially expressed interest in traveling abroad to fight for al-Shabab extremist group. As his plans to attack the mall were coming to fruition, he said, agents sold him an AK-47 and ammunition Tuesday and arrested him on the spot.
“This was a radicalized young man who needed to be monitored,” said U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen. The officers “were able to detect a threat and neutralize it before the defendant carried out his intention to kill, in his words, perhaps 30 to 60 people.”
Sheikhdoon Abdullahi Mohamud was arrested Tuesday in a public park in Richfield, several miles northwest of the Mall of America, after paying $600 to an undercover FBI employee posing as an ISIS member for the rifle and 200 rounds of ammunition, the agency said.
Mohamud appeared Wednesday in a yellow jail uniform for his first appearance in federal court in St. Paul. He told the judge he didn’t have a job, didn’t own a house or car and had no money in the bank. He was represented by Siri Carlson McDowell, a federal public defender. Carlson McDowell and Mohamud’s relatives declined to comment after the hearing.
According to an FBI agent’s affidavit, Mohamud repeatedly claimed in chat messages to the informant that he intended to attack and kill non-Muslims at the mall on Oct. 24, the date of a planned Hmong arts celebration.
When the informant asked him if he was seriously considering carrying out the attack, Mohamud replied, “Yes, I’m 100 percent sure,” the complaint states, and added, “I would have backed out already if I wasn’t sure.” »
Rosen said Mohamud is a U.S.-born U.S. citizen of Somali descent. The agent wrote that Mohamud’s messages expressed his admiration for the recent terrorist attacks as well as his interest in traveling to Somalia to join ISIS. Ultimately, he decided he couldn’t afford to go there and would attack the mall instead, according to the complaint.
The teen first came to the FBI’s attention in December 2024, the same month the source began exchanging messages with him, according to the complaint. By May 2025, officers were concerned enough to go to his home. His mother told them he hadn’t come home from school yet and called the boy’s father, who refused to talk to them and told them he would give their contact information to his attorney, according to the complaint.
“What I would say to parents across Minnesota and across America: If you get an indication — particularly if federal law enforcement is telling you — that your son or daughter is becoming radicalized, to the point where federal law enforcement wants to come and give you that warning, those are warnings that need to be heeded,” Rosen said.
Tens of thousands of people of Somali origin have lived in Minnesota since the arrival of refugees in the 1990s. Over the years, several were accused attempting to join ISIS or other terrorist groups.
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Johnson reported from Seattle. Associated Press reporter Philip Marcelo in New York contributed.
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