Man sentenced for robbing, threatening to "shoot up" Greeley Target

Published on August 31, 2021

GREELEY, Colo. (Weld County D.A.) – A judge handed down more than two decades in prison for a man convicted of several felonies stemming from a robbery at the Greeley Target last year.

Last week, 35-year-old Abdirahman Hussein Mohamed was sentenced to 24 years in the Colorado Department of Corrections. In July, a jury convicted the defendant of aggravated robbery, menacing with a deadly weapon, and theft.

In July of last year, Greeley police were called to Target on a report of a robbery. According to the victim, he was working at the customer service desk, when the defendant approached the counter.

The victim said he thought the defendant was there to purchase a set of headphones that another associate had brought up to the counter. The defendant asked the victim if a HP Chromebook laptop was brought up to the counter as well.

When the victim was ringing up the items, Mohamed leaned past the glass shield at the counter, pulled down his mask and told the victim he had a gun and would come back to the store and shoot the place up if the victim told anyone.

The defendant then proceeded to pick up the Chromebook and left without paying for the item. Police would later learn that he was on parole with a GPS monitor during the time of this incident. When the defendant was arrested the following day, he was wearing the same outfit that he had on in the Target surveillance footage. Officers also found a gun holster concealed in his pants.

“It’s clear that no level of supervision or structure will result in the defendant remaining law abiding,” Deputy District Attorney Lacy Wells said during the sentencing hearing. “This defendant is a danger to the community at large, his victims are strangers. The longer he is confined, the fewer victims we will have in Weld County.”

In a statement the victim prepared for last week’s sentencing hearing, he told the judge that it was both “daunting” as well as “liberating.”

 “The man who robbed me not only threatened my life in the moment, but immediately after the effects were extraordinarily profound and changed my life forever,” the victim said. “The night after the robbery, I remember pacing around, wondering if this man was going to show up and seek out his vengeance. He already threatened my life once. Why wouldn’t he again?”