Sheikhdoon Abdullahi Mohamud paid $600 for a Norinco AK-47 and roughly 200 rounds of ammunition. He did it in a public park in Richfield, Minnesota, on Tuesday. The seller was not a gun dealer. He was an undercover FBI agent posing as an ISIS member.
The 18-year-old, an American citizen of Somali descent, intended to use the weapon at the Mall of America in Bloomington. His target date was October 24, during a Hmong arts celebration. Court records show Mohamud told the informant he wanted to kill non-Muslims, estimating a body count of 30 to 60 victims. He expressed admiration for the Bondi Beach shooting in Australia and the January 2025 New Orleans attack, according to the federal complaint.
The FBI first flagged Mohamud in December 2024. By May 2025, agents visited his home, where his father refused to speak with them, directing them to his lawyer. The complaint notes Mohamud initially wanted to travel to Somalia to join ISIS but abandoned the plan due to cost. He pivoted to a local attack instead. US Attorney Daniel Rosen praised the team for disrupting the threat before it materialized.
Rosen addressed the broader community during the announcement. "If you get any indication... that your son or daughter is being radicalized," he said, "those are warnings that ought to be heeded." Minnesota is home to tens of thousands of Somali residents, a community that has seen multiple arrests for terror-related plots since refugees began arriving in the 1990s. Mohamud appeared in federal court in St. Paul on Wednesday in a yellow jail uniform.