FBI agents arrested Sheikhdoon Abdullahi Mohamud on Tuesday in Richfield, directly after he bought a Norinco AK-47 rifle, four magazines and about 200 rounds of ammunition. The seller was an undercover FBI agent, and an informant had arranged the purchase, according to court documents.
Mohamud is charged with one count of knowingly receiving a firearm and ammunition while knowing or having reasonable cause to believe they would be used to commit a felony and a federal crime of terrorism. Prosecutors say he picked Oct. 24, the date of a Hmong Arts Celebration at the mall in Bloomington, explaining that "it will be a lot of people."
The FBI opened its investigation in December 2024, and from then until his arrest a confidential informant traded hundreds of messages with Mohamud on social media and encrypted messaging apps, according to court documents. In those exchanges, prosecutors allege, he talked of traveling to Somalia to join a foreign terrorist organization, and by July he was telling the informant he could not afford the trip and would attack in the United States instead.
Prosecutors allege that Mohamud pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group. He chose the mall because of what he described as its Jewish ownership, the complaint says, and cited last year's deadly attack on a Hanukkah gathering at Bondi Beach in Sydney as an inspiration. The filing also describes his admiration for the January 2025 attack in New Orleans and the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando.
At a news conference Wednesday, U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen said investigators 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." He said the charges showed that the threat of terrorism in support of ISIS and other foreign terrorist organizations is "active and continuing." Christopher Dotson, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Minneapolis field office, called the messages "chilling" and said they showed "a blind hatred of people of other faiths."
Rosen said agents tried in 2025 to talk with Mohamud's parents about his radicalization and were rebuffed. FOX 9 reported that Rosen also said authorities did not believe the parents had grasped how far that radicalization had gone. He urged parents who hear such a warning from federal agents to heed it.
Mohamud, a U.S. citizen, was in custody Wednesday. The accusations come from a criminal complaint and an FBI agent's affidavit and have not been proved in court, and it was not immediately clear whether he had a lawyer.