Blast From The Past
By Mitch Berg
I was out at the Mall of America a week or two ago, perhaps for the second time since 2020.
And as with the other time, I wondered – whatever happened to Landen Hoffman?
Yep, I remembered the name – the little kid hurled off the third floor balcony at the MOA six years ago by a deranged man.
Turns out he’s doing pretty well. And as with most Twin Cities crime and political news, you have to go to London to get the news. But the kid’s doing well.
‘So many miracles happened [since then],’ Kari said in a phone interview Friday with DailyMail.com. ‘It was a big, long journey.
‘It took time for him to be back to him… He had to learn who he was again.’
That journey of getting Landen ‘back’ took around three years and was rough on the whole family. Kari watched her son’s personality change from sweet and kind to angry and mean to back again.
Read the whole thing. The kid’s mother wrote a book about it. Can’t honestly say I blame her.
That kind of episode had been exactly my worry when I used to take my then-little kids to the Mall. I saw those third-level balconies and thought “this is a headline waiting to happen”. I made sure the kids and I walked across the concourse from those not-nearly-tall-enough railings, or that I was watching everyone around me very carefully. And this was 15-20 years before the Landen Hoffman episode.
The lunatic who threw him over the edge is up for parole in seven years, by the way. Five’ll get you tel Mary Moriarty helps the perp sue the family for a share of the book revenues.
April 22nd, 2025 at 8:00 am
Well, feckless Mary declined to press charges against the state employee that keyed 6 Teslas, causing $20k in damages. They are going to use a “diversion process”, whatever the hell that is. But, I’m pretty sure that all of the owners of the Teslas are Democrats. I’m wondering then if they will be calling for Mary to be fired. One can only hope that they are smart enough to get off the plantation and sue the shit out of that little sanctimonious Walz protege.
April 22nd, 2025 at 11:46 am
Glad he’s doing well. Regarding the Zoo of America, let’s just say that there are a lot of reasons I don’t go there often, starting with the “no guns” policy, going on to the railings, and probably most significantly, there really aren’t very many stores that I really want to go to there. If I want something upscale that I can’t find in Rochester, you’ve got the outlet shops nearby, the Galleria in Edina, and the like.
For that matter, I’ve never really liked the overall effect of super high railings. Just invites trouble, IMO.
April 22nd, 2025 at 11:58 am
BH429, I fear you give them far too much credit, unfortunately.
April 22nd, 2025 at 12:55 pm
Sure, it’s all fun and games until the Sammies start yeeting troons and chomos out of the windows of their free high rise apartments.