Three and a half years after her five-year-old son was thrown over a third-floor balcony at the Mall of America, Kari Hoffmann is speaking out about witnessing the horrific incident and the days, weeks, and years of healing that followed.
‘Angels caught him, there’s no denying it.’
Hoffman had taken her son Landen, now 8, and one of his friends to the Mall of America in Minnesota to “celebrate” a successful parent-teacher conference. As the trio was looking at the alligator at the Rainforest Cafe a stranger approached Landen and his friend.
“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 gonna turn this alligator on for them,” she told Good Morning America.
“He snatched [Landen] and ran. And I was just frozen … It happened so fast. I screamed, ‘No!’ after he was already thrown.”
While Hoffman barely remembers running to her son’s side, she very clearly recalls screaming, “No, Landen’s not gonna die.”
A crowd instantly formed and Hoffman asked everyone to pray for her son.
“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.”
It was that little bit of hope and the surgeon’s words that Landen was “going to be okay,” that helped the family believe Landen would survive.
“Listening to him breathing with the machine’s beeping was the best sound I’ve ever heard in my life,” Hoffman said. “Because that meant he was alive.”
Despite being thrown from of a height of approximately 40 feet, Landen was “alert and conscious” and no longer considered in critical condition a little more than two weeks after he was rushed to the hospital.
Each day he continued to defy the odds and his condition improved. After four months he was released from the hospital, just in time to attend his first day of kindergarten.
Emmanuel Aranda, 24, plead guilty in May 2019 to attempted first-degree murder and was sentenced to 19 years in prison for the attack. He admitted to investigators we went to the mall with the intentions of “killing someone.”
It had been reported that Aranda was previously banned from the Mall of America for two other instances, and in 2021 the Hoffman family sued the mall for failure to prevent Aranda from entering the premise.
Earlier this month the family settled with the mall, and the two parties were working on ways to prevent similar attacks.
Despite nearly losing her son, Hoffman said she has forgiven Aranda for his actions.
“It’s a decision that you have to make so that God can do what he needs to do in your life … and that was to save Landen.”
The amount of pain and suffering the Hoffman family has gone through the past several years is unimaginable. And then to have the heart to forgive her son’s attacker!
Please join me in to praying for Landen and his continued healing.
