Somali Who Filmed Shiloh Hendrix Had Rape Charges Dropped

Sharmake Beyle Omar, the Somali man behind the viral video that sent Shiloh Hendrix to court, had charges of raping a 16-year-old girl dismissed by the Olmsted County District Court — the same district court that just ruled against Hendrix.

District court judge Christa Daily ordered Hendrix to pay a fine and place her on strict probation, despite letting off convicted sex offenders with no jail time.

In 2022, Omar was charged with “3rd-degree criminal sexual conduct–penetration of person under 18 years old,” “use of coercion,” and “5th-degree criminal sexual conduct–nonconsensual penetration,” alongside Mohamed Hussein Omer. The two men were scheduled to stand trial when the allegations against them were mysteriously dropped by the Olmstead County Attorney’s Office in March 2025, almost one month before Omar filmed the TikTok video of Hendrix that garnered 15 million views.

The state’s dismissal of complaint cited the reason for dropping the charges as being “in the interest of justice.”

Omar and Omer were positively identified in a photo line-up by a teenage girl who reported to the Rochester Police Department that she was sexually assaulted by them “over a period of multiple days.”

According to the statement of probable cause from the Rochester Police Department, the 16-year-old victim ran away from her foster-care home in Farmington, MN on Jan. 19, 2022. That night she met Omer at a gas station who offered her a place to stay. Once she arrived at his trailer home, the teenager told RPD investigators that both Omer and Omar raped and sexually assaulted her, including forced oral sexual intercourse without her consent, and took her shoes so she couldn’t run away.

On Jan. 20, 2022, the juvenile escaped from the residence in a pair of oversized rain boots and ran to a gas station where she called a man who was a previous foster care parent to come pick her up. The man reported the assaults to the Rochester Police Department shortly after finding out about them from the juvenile and taking her to the Children’s Minnesota Hospital in Minneapolis for a sexual assault examination. She was found to have sustained dehydration, sleep deprivation, lack of food, foot pain, and sexual trauma.

Omar was arrested in February 2022 and first appeared in court in August 2022 where he pled not guilty.

Omar called the charges “baseless” when asked about them in an interview about the “racial slur incident” he recorded.

Omar said in a video response, “it has been proven that I had never done anything wrong and the case was dismissed” about the charges.

Instead, he claimed he was being “punished severely” after filming the video.

“I’m not looking for fame,” he said. “I just did it because I was trying to help this kid. I didn’t want to make any money off of that video at all. I just wanted the world to see.”

Omar claimed he made “less than a dollar” off of the ordeal. He started a crowd funding campaign, and raised over $40,000 because he felt he and his family were “relentlessly targeted.”

The Federalist attempted to reach the Olmstead County District Court for comment. After being on hold for 20 minutes because “all agents were busy,” and directed to leave a voice message with the criminal affairs office where the “mailbox was full,” The Federalist was then transferred to another department where the call was dropped.

Libby Bandelin is a reporting and editing intern at The Federalist with the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. A recent graduate from Dordt University, she earned her B.A. in communications with an emphasis in journalism and a minor in criminal justice. In college, she served as chief editor for her student newspaper, and her writing won third place in the 2026 Cordell Prize. She’s also attended journalism intensives with WORLD newsgroup and Alliance Defending Freedom.