"Angels caught him, no denying it": Mother of boy thrown from MOA balcony speaks out in ABC News interview
MINNEAPOLIS -- More than two and a half years after a moment of pure horror at the Mall of America, the mother of a then-5-year-old boy who was thrown from a third-floor balcony is speaking on the incident.
The boy suffered numerous broken bones, head trauma and severe bleeding. Paramedics revived the child and rushed him to Children's Hospital. He spent four-and-a-half months in the hospital.
Kari Hoffmann spoke exclusively with ABC's "Good Morning America." In her interview, which aired nationwide Wednesday morning, she says she and her family were at the mall that April 2019 afternoon to celebrate finishing their parent-teacher conference day. Among the group there was young Landen Hoffman.
It was when they were in the vicinity of Rainforest Café that she said a stranger approached.
"We were just looking at the alligator at the Rainforest Café, and a stranger came up and was whispering to these two little boys. And I thought that he was going to turn this alligator on for them," Hoffmann told ABC News. "He snatched [Landen] and ran. And I was just frozen … It happened so fast. I screamed, 'No!' after he was already thrown."
The man who threw Landen, Emmanuel Aranda, would later tell investigators he went to the mall with the intent of killing someone. According to the criminal complaint, he told investigators that he was angry for the way women at the mall rebuffed his attempt to talk. Unable to find an adult victim, he chose instead to grab the 5-year-old boy named Landen and throw him over the third-floor railing, 40 feet to the concrete floor below.
Kari Hoffmann said she doesn't even remember running down the escalators, "but I was screaming the whole time, 'No, Landen's not gonna die.'"
When a crowd began gathering, she says she asked them all to pray for her son.
"I don't care who was looking. If they were looking, I asked them to pray," she told ABC News. "He's got a heartbeat. He was breathing. We got in the ambulance, and right before they shut the door, he opened his eyes for a second."
She described hearing the beeping of the medical machines attached to her son as "the best sound I've ever heard in my life … because it meant he was alive." Family members were jubilant when a doctor informed them Landen was going to recover.
In all, Landen spent more than four months in the hospital. When one year had passed since the incident, the boy's father posted the following message on his GoFundMe page:
"As a one-year update on Landen's story, I've decided to share my journal on how I felt on Easter last year, which was day 9 in his healing journey. Landen was still intubated and fighting for his life. This year Easter is on April 12, which is the one-year anniversary of this horrific event that I now call "the day God sent his Angels to save my son."
In her interview with "Good Morning America," Kari Hoffmann said that she was "frozen in time" until she was able to speak on the incident, and felt now was the time to move forward with the story.
"Angels caught him, there's no denying it," she told ABC News. "Yes, he had injuries, and we had to live through all of this pain to get to the end. But sometimes God allows us to go through things to teach us something."
She said Landen struggled with some behavioral issues at first, but has been working to "relearn the rules" since, and now enjoys playing hockey. His ninth birthday is in January.
Aranda had been banned from the mall on two prior instances. The family did file a lawsuit against the mall, arguing their security should have prevented him from entering the building. That lawsuit was settled.
Aranda pleaded guilty to first-degree attempted murder and was sentenced to 19 years in prison.
