Five months after horrific attack, boy thrown over balcony at Mall of America gets to go home

Five months after a horrific attack, 5-year-old Landen Hoffman finally got discharged from the hospital and returned home.

What's the background?

On April 12, Hoffman was at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, with his mother and a friend, standing near the Rainforest Cafe restaurant on the mall's third level. Without warning, 25-year-old Emmanuel Aranda snatched Hoffman and threw him over a nearby balcony. Aranda had never met Hoffman before, and had chosen him at random.

Hoffman fell more than 40 feet. Miraculously, he did not suffer brain damage, nerve damage, spinal cord damage, or any other serious internal injury.

Aranda was sentenced to 19 years in prison for attempted murder. He admitted to the attack, and said that he had gone to the mall in the hopes of killing an adult, but settled on Hoffman when his initial plan did not work out. According to USA Today, despite pleading guilty in May he filed notice on Friday in order to appeal his case.

A GoFundMe page has raised more than $1 million to help Landen's family.

What happened now?

On Tuesday, GoFundMe page organizer Noah Hanneman posted that Landen had "completed his inpatient rehabilitation and is now home." He will still need outpatient rehabilitation.

"Thank you to all of you who prayed for us and loved us during the past 4 ½ months," Hanneman wrote in the update. "You helped to give us hope and show us the Glory of God's great love here on earth even during the darkest of days."