I remember seeing the story six years ago and feeling like I’d been punched in the stomach. It seemed to exemplify everything that was going wrong in our country.
The bad memory: a psychopath picked up a boy at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, and threw him over a three-story balcony. The boy, Landen Hoffman, then five years old, fell 40 feet and suffered broken bones, severe head trauma, and internal injuries.
It was and remains a horrible story—but there’s some good news. Now 11 years old, Hoffman has worked hard and has been helped in his recovery by hero doctors and his supportive family, and he’s doing well.
His mom Kari Hoffman recalled that awful moment in a telephone interview and described what’s transpired since:
Kari ran down several escalators screaming for her son, who laid limp on the floor and she began praying to God.
‘So many miracles happened [since then],’ Kari said in a phone interview Friday with DailyMail.com. ‘It was a big, long journey.
‘It took time for him to be back to him… He had to learn who he was again.’
That journey of getting Landen ‘back’ took around three years and was rough on the whole family. Kari watched her son’s personality change from sweet and kind to angry and mean to back again.
🚨Now aged 11, Landen is thriving and miles away from the boy in the hospital bed who was fighting for his life with several broken bones, severe head trauma, and a life-threatening injury to his vena cava vein, the one that runs to your heart, his mother Kari Hoffman told… pic.twitter.com/IfnFuQmLzR
— The Oregon Patriot (@joetheorpatriot) April 19, 2025
The tweet continues:
The then-five-year-old was thrown over the balcony by Emmanuel Aranda on April 12, 2019, when Landen and his mother went to the Mall of America in Minneapolis to meet up with another friend and his mom for the Crayola Experience happening there.
While waiting to get inside, Aranda approached the two boys and even spoke with Kari, before grabbing young Landen and launching him over the third-floor railing.
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Things have come a long way since that terrible day, and the family’s faith helped them get through the ordeal. They termed the crime “evil”:
However, the family of five doesn’t look at the horrifying incident as a horrible event.
‘Nobody looks at this as a bad thing that happened to us, it was evil. What happened was evil,’ the religious mother said.
Landen even ‘loves’ telling his story, the mother-of-three said.
The moment made Landen more reverent in his faith and he often tells people: ‘God saved me, God’s real.’
Aranda, who threw Landen over the balcony after a woman rejected his advances, is in jail serving a 19-year sentence.
In my mind, this guy should be serving a life sentence with no possibility of parole, but this happened in deep blue Minnesota, so that’s not going to happen.
Miracle at the mall: boy viciously thrown off balcony by deranged stranger now thriving https://t.co/sINUIpBw2r pic.twitter.com/nmWf56q2Dc
— New York Post (@nypost) April 19, 2025
Evil did not win this round, and Landen is alive and enjoying life. That is beautiful news on this Easter weekend.
All of us here at RedState wish you a happy and thoughtful Easter weekend.
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