The family nearly torn apart after a five-year-old boy was thrown from a third-floor balcony inside Mall of America in April 2019 spoke publicly for the first time.
In a segment that aired Wednesday morning on ABC’s Good Morning America, now nine-year-old Landen Hoffmann talked about how others treat him now that’s nearly fully recovered.
“It was me that got thrown,” said Landon in the interview apparently taped at his family’s home. “They say, ‘Really?’ and then I show them everything on me.”
His mother, Kari, said it happened in an instant.
“It happened in a blink of an eye. He snatched him and ran,” she said in the interview. “I was just frozen. Like, ‘What?’ You can’t react.
It happened so fast.”
She believes Landen tried to catch himself as he fell, and that’s why he had broken wrists and arms, along with a brain injury.
“I believe that angels caught him, because I prayed for angels coming in there,” she said.
Not long after it happened, Emmanuel Aranda, 24, pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree murder and was sentenced to 19 years in prison for the attack.
Kari Hoffmann said it didn’t take her long to forgive Aranda.
“I don’t believe forgiveness is a feeling,” she said. “I believe it’s a decision you have to make.”