FBI says it stopped a Mall of America terror attack by a teen after agents sold him an assault rifle

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — 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 AK-47 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 to Somalia to fight for al-Shabab militants. As his plans to instead attack the mall solidified, the complaint says, agents sold him the gun and ammunition on Tuesday and arrested him on the spot.“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