FBI agents thwarted a terror attack by a teenager on the Mall of America after supplying him with an assault rifle following months of text messages, authorities said Wednesday.
The 18-year-old had been under investigation for nearly two years, trading messages with a confidential informant, before agents sold him the rifle and ammunition and arrested him on the spot, they said.
“This was a radicalized young man who needed to be watched,” U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen said as he praised the FBI investigation. Agents “were able to detect a threat, and disrupt it, before the defendant carried out his intention to kill, in his words, maybe 30 to 60 people.”
Sheikhdoon Abdullahi Mohamud, 18, was arrested Tuesday in a public park in Richfield, several miles northwest of the Mall of America, after he paid $600 to an undercover FBI employee posing as a member of ISIS for an AK-47 and 200 rounds of ammunition, according to the criminal complaint.
Mohamud appeared in a yellow jail uniform for his initial hearing Wednesday in federal court in St. Paul.
In text messages with the informant, Mohamud repeatedly affirmed his intent to carry out an attack to kill non-Muslims at the mall on Oct. 24, the date of a scheduled Hmong arts celebration, the complaint said.
It was not immediately known if the teen had an attorney who might speak on his behalf. The Associated Press could not immediately identify any of his family members to contact for comment.
Rosen said Mohamud is an American-born U.S. citizen of Somali descent. According to the complaint, in his text messages he expressed admiration for recent terror attacks as well as an interest in traveling to Somalia to join ISIS. Ultimately he decided he couldn’t afford to travel there and would attack the mall instead, it said.
The teen first came to the FBI’s attention in December 2024, the same month the source began exchanging messages with him, the complaint said. By May 2025, agents were concerned enough that they went to his home. His mother told them he wasn’t home from school yet and called the boy’s father, who declined to speak with them and said he would give their contact information to his lawyer, the complaint said.
“What I would say to parents all over Minnesota, and all over America: If you get any indication — especially if you hear from federal law enforcement — that your son or daughter is being radicalized, to the point where federal law enforcement wants to come and give you that warning, those are warnings that ought to be heeded,” Rosen said.
Tens of thousands of people of Somali descent live in Minnesota, dating back to when refugees began arriving in the 1990s. Over the years several have been charged with attempting to join ISIS or other terror groups.