The Minnesota boy, who was thrown from a balcony at the Mall of America six years ago and had to undergo emergency surgery, has seen years of rehabilitation thriving, his mother said.
Landen Hoffman was only five years old, and a confused stranger randomly picked him up at the mall and threw him on the side of the balcony on the third floor.
The boy plunged nearly 40 feet and broke his skull, facial bones, arms and legs.
Emmanuel Deshaun Aranda, 24, told officers he was angry that he was “looking for someone to kill” when he was rejected by a woman and reached the child.
Landen survives, and his mother says the 11-year-old boy is healthy and happy.
“It was a big, long journey,” Kari Hoffman said. I told the Daily Mail. “So many miracles have happened.”
Landen’s recovery took more than three years after an injury to the frontal lobe in the fall, his mother said.
She saw her son’s personality change from sweet to anger, and saw him eventually change again to his happy self, she said.
“It took him a while for him to return to him… he had to learn who he was again,” Kari said.
Since Landen was in intensive care for four months, he had to go through more than a dozen surgeries and years of physical rehabilitation.
He doesn’t remember autumn, his mother said.
The pair recently visited the hospital where they spent all their months in 2019. The miracle of the mall.
In April 2019, Kari took Landen and one of his friends to the mall as a snack following a parent-teacher meeting.
Aranda was sentenced 19 years later at the bar after pleading guilty to attempted murder in 2019.
