The arrest of an 18-year-old who planned a mass shooting at the Mall of America has Minnesotans wondering: How safe is the mall?

Federal authorities this week arrested Sheikhdoon Abdullahi Mohamud and charged him with knowingly receiving a firearm and ammunition to commit an act of terrorism. The arrest followed a two-year investigation that revealed Mohamud hoped to shoot people attending the mall’s Oct. 24 Hmong Arts Celebration.

The details of the arrest, and past incidents at the Mall of America, have renewed interest in safety there. Mall officials said news of the would-be attack is “unsettling and concerning” for guests, but security measures are already in place.

“The safety and security of everyone who visits and works at Mall of America has always been our highest priority,” MOA officials said in a statement. “We maintain multiple layers of security, both visible and behind the scenes, and will continue to work closely with our local, state and federal law enforcement partners.”

FBI Special Agent in Charge Christopher D. Dotson said in a news conference Wednesday that Mohamud planned the attack in the hopes of becoming a martyr. Agents arrested the 18-year-old in Richfield on Tuesday after he bought an AK-47 and 200 rounds of ammo from an undercover officer posing as a member of the terrorist group ISIS. Mohamud allegedly pledged allegiance to the group and planned to carry out his attack to support them.

After years spent preventing terror attacks at the Mall of America, Simon Osamoh says he was not surprised by the news. Osamoh is CEO of Kingswood Security Consulting, but worked as head of counterterrorism for MOA from 2011 to 2014. During that tenure, Osamoh said threats from ISIS and Al-Shabab prompted officials to improve security with more canine units, plainclothes officers and intelligence analysts. More safety measures are in place “in case that day of evil ever comes,” Osamoh said, but he added online threats have grown harder to find.

“Historically, the mall has already been prepared because they knew that the mall was considered a target. And in Minneapolis and in Minnesota there has been a history of young East Africans going back to fight for Islamic terror groups,” Osamoh said. “The mall is now more sophisticated ... (but) it does become more difficult to apprehend or even detect these individuals because they are using sophisticated methods to remain undetected.”

Intermittent terror and shooting incidents have plagued the mall.

Security guards thought they would be caught in gunfire last month when a group of men reportedly brandished guns. A criminal complaint details how more than a dozen men were yelling at each other in Macy’s on Sept. 4 when several of them pulled out guns. Officers found and arrested four of the men with firearms nearby.

A 2022 shooting in the Nordstrom department store left a 19-year-old dead and led police to charge four teens. Mall officials added bag checkpoints and security measures in response, and two gunmen involved in that shooting received prison sentences of at least 19 years.

In 2019 a stranger threw a 5-year-old boy from the mall’s third floor, hospitalizing him with critical injuries that he took months to recover from.

More than a decade ago, investigations into a wave of Somali-Americans from Minnesota aiming to leave the U.S. and fight with Islamic extremist groups led to indictments against 11 people. All were charged in a conspiracy to support ISIS.

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Nicole Norfleet and Tim Harlow of the Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this report.

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