FBI agents thwarted a terror attack by a teenager on the Mall of America after monitoring him for nearly two years and ultimately supplying 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 trading messages with a confidential informant. A criminal complaint says he initially expressed an interest in traveling overseas to fight for the extremist group al-Shabab. As his plans to instead attack the mall solidified, it says, agents sold him an AK-47 and ammunition on Tuesday and arrested him on the spot.

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 This was a radicalized young man who needed to be watched,  U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen said. 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 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 the rifle and 200 rounds of ammunition, the agency said.


Mohamud appeared in a yellow jail uniform for his initial appearance Wednesday in federal court in St. Paul. He told the judge he did not have a job, own a house or a car, or have any money in the bank. He was represented by Siri Carlson McDowell, a federal public defender. Carlson McDowell and relatives of Mohamud declined to comment after the hearing.

According to an FBI agent's sworn complaint, Mohamud repeatedly affirmed 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 scheduled Hmong arts celebration.

When the informant asked if he was serious about committing the attack, Mohamud replied,  yes i am 100% sure,  the complaint said, and added:  I would have backed out by now if I wasn't sure. 

Rosen said Mohamud is an American-born U.S. citizen of Somali descent. The agent wrote th

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