Just to reiterate (and hopefully add to) what others have said, yes, first-person narration is told in auto-biographical terms. The sentence describes a distant memory and so the MC knowing these things makes perfect sense. All you need to remember about first-person is that the MC can't know about events they haven't witnessed/been informed of. I grabbed a beer from the fridge and drank. Meanwhile, unbeknown to me, my best friend was lying in a pool of his own blood on the other side of town. It doesn't work, does it? I suppose strictly speaking you could elaborate on the sentence as it is and explain how you learned this news (and that it had probably happened as you were drinking the beer) but you see my point hopefully.
It's intriguing...and so difficult. I'm sure I saw your drafts on the English forum - before its demise. Just with a pinch of fluidity you might fly with this. If you tilt me only a little bit into scene....cut the words, perhaps I mean 'verbiage...' I suppose it depends on 'story.' Have you tried agents?
It was my debut novel that I self-published a while ago. I have since moved on but still look at the reviews and quite a few were SPAG so I pulled it back and had a professional editor go over it. I’m using lessons learned (a lot from this forum) and will apply them to my new work. My sticky index was high for that book but I'm keeping a close eye on my future stuff.
