The FBI says it has stopped what investigators describe as a planned mass shooting at one of the most visited shopping centers in the country, and the alleged target date was just over two weeks away.
Federal agents arrested 18-year-old Sheikhdoon Abdullahi Mohamud of Richfield, Minnesota, on Tuesday. He is accused of planning a mass casualty attack at the Mall of America in Bloomington in support of ISIS.
U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen announced the charges on Wednesday. Mohamud is charged with obtaining a firearm to carry out an act of terrorism in support of a designated foreign terrorist organization.
According to the criminal complaint, Mohamud was arrested at a public park right after he paid $600 to an undercover FBI employee posing as an ISIS associate. He walked away from the exchange with an AK-47-style rifle, 200 rounds of ammunition, and four 30-round magazines, and then agents moved in.
The complaint says he planned to strike the Hmong Arts Celebration at the mall on October 24. His reason, according to the court filing, was blunt: “it will be a lot of people.”
Court documents say he told a source he intended to kill 30 to 60 people. Federal authorities also say he targeted non-Muslims.
This was not a sudden plot. The FBI says it had been in contact with Mohamud since December 2024, when a confidential source began exchanging messages with him on social media and encrypted apps.
Over nearly two years, investigators say, Mohamud expressed hatred of non-Muslims and talked about joining terrorist groups overseas. He floated al Qaeda and al Shabaab before settling on the Islamic State.
The complaint says he wanted to travel to Somalia to fight. When he realized he could not afford the trip, prosecutors say, he decided to carry out an attack at home instead.
The messages quoted in the affidavit are disturbing. Mohamud allegedly praised the 2024 New Year’s Eve attack on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, the 2017 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, and the 2025 mass shooting at a Hanukkah gathering at Bondi Beach in Sydney.
In September, the source tried to talk him out of it, according to the filing. Mohamud allegedly answered that he was “100% committed” to dying for the sake of Allah.
During the weapons transaction, prosecutors say he told the undercover agent that he was an active member of ISIS. He also allegedly said part of his motivation was that the Mall of America was owned by Jews.
Rosen said Mohamud is an American-born U.S. citizen of Somali descent. Rosen called him a radicalized young man who needed to be watched, and he praised the Joint Terrorism Task Force and the investigators who did the watching.
FBI Minneapolis Special Agent in Charge Christopher Dotson described the messages as chilling. He said Mohamud allegedly sought martyrdom in carrying out his plans to murder innocent civilians.
Dotson also revealed that the FBI tried to intervene earlier. Agents reached out to Mohamud’s parents in 2025 after they became concerned about his online radicalization, but the parents declined to speak with them and deferred to their lawyer.
Mohamud made his first appearance before a federal judge on Wednesday afternoon in St. Paul, and he remains in custody.
