Boy, 5, was thrown over Mall of America balcony by unhinged loner… and somehow survived. Now, he opens up on the moment of evil and the emotional reason he calls it ‘a good story’

At just 11 years old, Landen Hoffman is something of a local celebrity in his hometown of Bloomingdale, Minnesota. Two weeks ago, at hockey practice, a boy his age recognized him on the ice.

‘Is it you? Are you the one?’ the classmate asked hesitantly. ‘Are you… the boy in the book?’

He was referring to Miracle at the Mall, written by Landen’s mother, Kari Hoffman. It tells the story of how a five-year-old Landen was thrown three stories from the Mall of America in a random attack by a stranger. Landen dropped 40 feet to the ground, sustaining injuries so severe that doctors were astonished he survived.

‘I was just at the mall and saw the place where you were thrown,’ the boy told Landen. ‘I didn’t want to mention it.’

‘Oh, it’s okay!’ Landen replied confidently. ‘You can say it. I’m a miracle! God saved me. This is a good story.’

In the years since the attack, Landen has defied every prognosis, exceeding even the most hopeful expectations for his recovery.

‘He’s just active and funny. He loves sports and friends. He loves life,’ Kari Hoffman told the Daily Mail. ‘He wakes up every day, jumps out of bed and is so happy to be alive. I’ve never seen joy in a child like him. He signs books, gives them to his teachers. He’s so happy to share the miracle story.’

Although Landen doesn’t remember the fateful day, the events that led up to his attack are seared into the mind of his mother. It was April 12, 2019, the morning after Landen had received a glowing report card from his preschool teacher, and Kari wanted to treat him to a day at the mall.

Kari and Landen, along with his friend Will and his mother, arrived around 9.45am, before the Crayola store opened at Mall of America, the biggest mall in the US which happens to be in their hometown.

‘They were just going to play and color and enjoy the day,’ Kari said.

While they waited for the store to open, a man, who Kari believed at the time was a maintenance worker, approached the boys and started whispering to them.

‘He looked kind, and the boys were giggling, so whatever he was saying was funny. But they were five,’ Kari said. ‘I later learned that he was saying, “If you don’t get off this rock, I’m going to throw you over the edge!”‘

Kari asked the man if he wanted them to move, but he reassured her they could stay. In a matter of seconds, the stranger snatched Landen and ran with him. The man, later identified by authorities as Emmanuel Aranda, swiftly tossed Landen over the third-floor balcony.

‘I yelled, “Take your hands off my son, Satan,”‘ Kari recalled saying. ‘I ran down three escalator stairs yelling, “Somebody threw my baby!” and, “No! Landen’s not going to die!”‘

When a woman pointed to the place where Landen had fallen, Kari at first scooped her son up. Another bystander yelled for her to put him back down as is protocol in emergency response to prevent further injury.

As people began crowding around Landen, two trauma nurses who worked at Children’s Minnesota Hospital rushed from the second level to assist. Initially, Landen did not have a pulse or a heartbeat, so the nurses gave him CPR. Kari asked strangers surrounding her son to join in prayer.

‘The nurses said, “We have a heartbeat,” and I yelled back, “Yes, we have a heartbeat!”‘ Kari said. ‘I was just refusing to let him die.’

When the ambulance arrived, Kari was told she could not ride with Landen as the paramedics needed space to continue providing life-saving measures.

‘I told Landen, “I’m going to be right behind you.” As soon as I said that to him, he opened his eyes and looked at me,’ she said.

Kari rode to the hospital in a police car, with officers asking her questions about the attack that she couldn’t fathom answering. She wondered how a stranger could be capable of such a heinous act.

At the hospital, Kari watched as ten doctors and nurses in the trauma room simultaneously worked on every part of Landen’s body. Standing on a folding chair so she could see her baby, Kari kept praying and refused to believe that Landen would be anything other than okay. 

Before the doctors took Landen to the operating room, Kari kissed his entire body from head to toe.

In the hallway, she met her parents and brother and finally fell to her knees. At that moment, roughly an hour after the attack and without knowing the identity of the attacker or his motivations, Kari decided that she had to forgive him.

‘I really wanted this man to be out of my mind,’ she said. ‘I forgive him, I have no idea what happened to him in his life. I’m sure something really bad happened. But I don’t want to worry about that so I could fight for my son.’

Aranda, now 31, later told police he was looking for ‘somebody to kill’ after facing rejection by women. He pled guilty to attempted premeditated first-degree murder just a month after the attack and was sentenced to 19 years in prison. He is currently serving at the Minnesota Correctional Facility – Willow River/Moose Lake.

For Landen, the road to recovery was not easy. He was in an induced coma for ten days to allow his brain swelling to come down. Kari received letters from around the world from people wishing Landen a speedy recovery.

When Landen finally woke up, he asked for a bath and his iPad.

‘Because that’s what we did before bed,’ his mother said.

Landon was intubated and therefore could not speak. Doctors were optimistic about his survival but were unsure in the early stages whether he could learn to walk again, or if his brain activity would return to normal.

‘I was excited to get him back, and when he woke up, he was not the same boy. He was in so much pain. It was so sad,’ Kari said.

A later brain scan showed the damage was not as severe as expected.

‘The doctor ran down the hall with his computer and a big smile on his face to show us that from a brain standpoint, it did look like he fell off a bike. We were just ecstatic. I’ll never forget that day.’

Landen spent four months in recovery, battling injuries that would have been devastating under any circumstances. His vena cava, the major vein that carries blood back to the heart, had been torn from his heart in the fall. Doctors had never before seen a patient survive such an injury.

During the next few months as he recovered physically, Kari noticed Landen’s personality changed, something doctors had warned about, from ‘shy, sweet boy’ to ‘more impulsive,’ perhaps in part due to the pain medication.

Kari said: ‘He was going through withdrawals. He was okay one moment, and then he would be angry. It was really hard.’

All told, Landen’s hospital bills surpassed $1.6 million. The family sued the mall for negligence, and the parties reached a confidential settlement in 2022.

Aranda, who had prior assault, theft and property damage charges in Illinois, had been arrested twice before in 2015 for throwing objects from the mall’s balcony and harassing women. He had been banned from the mall for a year before the trespass order expired.

According to authorities, he had visited the mall the day before attacking Landen, looking for an adult to kill, but said it ‘did not work out’ that day.

As part of the settlement between the mall and the Hoffmans, the city of Bloomington amended its trespass ordinance, removing that one-year limitation and allowing the possibility of a lifetime ban at the Mall of America. 

Kari and Landen have never returned to the Mall of America since the attack.

‘I just don’t think I could emotionally handle returning to the place where my son was so seriously injured,’ Kari said. ‘It’s a personal decision based on what we went through, and I don’t feel that returning there is something I need to do in order to heal.’

Today, Landen attends a special school for his dyslexia and alexia, both results of his brain trauma. He loves fishing and hockey and has owned his miracle story.

When classmates doubt his story, Landen lifts his shirt up and shows them his battle scars, not only the ones he sustained during the fall, but the ones left behind by the medical treatments and surgeries that saved his life.

Landen told the Daily Mail: ‘If people don’t believe in God, they can look at me, and if they still don’t, I can’t change that.’