The 5-year-old boy who was thrown off a third-floor balcony at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, is showing “real signs of recovery,” according to a post on behalf of the family.
Mac Hammond, the pastor at the family’s church, said the boy, who he identified as Landen, had gone through an MRI that lasted five hours and referred to the results as “truly a miracle,” Minneapolis television station KARE reported.
“Doctors said they found no brain damage — not even any swelling,” Hammond said at the service. “No spinal damage, no nerve damage … doctors are saying it is truly a miracle.”
The pastor said that doctors described the injuries as if he “fell off a bicycle instead of off the third floor of the mall.”
A GoFundMe for the boy has reached nearly $1 million.
Emmanuel Aranda, 24, of Minneapolis, is accused of throwing the young child off the mall balcony and is charged with attempted murder.
According to a criminal complaint, the boy and his mother were outside the Rain Forest Café when Aranda came up close to them. The mother had never seen Aranda before, and she asked if she and her son should move.
Instead, Aranda picked up the boy and threw him over the railing, the complaint states.
Aranda told police he had come to the mall a day earlier intending to kill an adult, but that did not “work out,” according to the complaint.
So he returned Friday and apparently chose the boy instead.
Aranda told police he knew what he was planning to do was wrong. He explained he had visited the mall for years, trying to speak to women there, but they rejected him. Aranda said that made him lash out.
CNN Wire contributed to this report.
