FBI arrests Somali-American teen over plot to carry out gun attack at America's largest mall

[Financial News] The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) uncovered in advance a major terror plot targeting the Mall of America, a large shopping mall in Minnesota, and arrested the suspect at the scene.
On the 7th (local time), the Associated Press reported that the FBI arrested the suspect after monitoring him closely for about two years, during the handover of a weapon just before the planned attack was to be carried out.
According to investigators, the arrested suspect was identified as 18-year-old Somali-American Sheikhdun Abdullahi Mohamud. On the 6th, he was arrested at the scene just after paying $600 to an FBI undercover agent posing as a member of Islamic State (IS), a Sunni Islamist militant group, and receiving an AK-47 rifle and 200 rounds of live ammunition in a park in Richfield, just a few kilometers from the Mall of America.
According to the criminal complaint, Mohamud repeatedly expressed in private messages to an FBI informant his intention to attack the Mall of America on October 24 and kill non-Muslims. The planned attack date coincided with a cultural arts festival for the Hmong, Minnesota's largest Asian ethnic minority.
When the informant asked again whether he intended to carry out the attack, Mohamud reportedly replied, "I'm 100% sure. If I hadn't been sure, I would have quit long ago."
Federal prosecutor Daniel Rosen explained, "The suspect intended to kill between 30 and as many as 60 people" and "we were able to identify a radicalized, dangerous individual in advance and stop him just before he committed the crime."
The FBI began monitoring Mohamud in December 2024, when he was 16, after detecting messages he exchanged with an informant. Initially, he showed interest in traveling abroad to join Somalia's al-Shabaab or IS, but when he had difficulty raising money for the trip, he appears to have shifted his focus to attacking a mall in the United States.
In May 2025, the FBI also visited Mohamud's home in person after recognizing the seriousness of the situation. His mother said at the time that he had not returned from school, while his father refused to speak with authorities and said he would communicate through a lawyer.
Rosen urged, "I have a message for parents in Minnesota and across the United States. If there are signs that your child is becoming radicalized or you receive a warning from a federal law enforcement agency, you must take it seriously."
Appearing in prison clothes at the federal court in St. Paul that day, Mohamud told the judge, "I don't have a job, savings, a house or a car." His court-appointed attorney and family declined to respond to media inquiries after the hearing.
Minnesota has been home to tens of thousands of Somali residents since refugee arrivals began in the 1990s. But similar incidents have continued to occur, including cases in which young people were caught trying to join armed groups overseas, heightening concern in the local community, the AP reported.

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