A mother’s intuition is unparalleled — just ask Jake Johnson.
Johnson, 45, narrowly missed a 1988 school shooting after his mother had a “gut feeling” that she would “never” see him again if she sent him to school.
“I was sitting next to my mom, I was in fourth grade,” Johnson recalled during a recent episode of the “Dope as Usual” podcast. “Out of nowhere, my mother turns to me and goes, ‘You’re not going to school tomorrow.’”
Johnson argued that his class had plans to go on a field trip that day, so she relented and let him go – especially since he wouldn’t physically be in the school.
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“The next day — May 20, 1988 — a woman walks into my elementary school through the door that my class was in,” the New Girl alum continued. “A woman walked into the school wearing a robe and nothing underneath. … The room was empty, she walked through, walked down the hall, walked into another room, shot seven kids, killed one of them. True story.”
The woman was Laurie Dann, who walked into the Hubbard Woods Elementary School in Winnetka, Illinois, and opened fire on a second grade class — wounding five (not seven) and killing one —after telling the students she was there to teach them about guns, according to ABC7 Chicago. After fleeing the scene, she invaded a local couple’s home, taking their son hostage and shooting him before killing herself.
Johnson added further context to the story while appearing on the “Dope as Usual” podcast.
“I used to get in a lot of trouble as a kid and I used to always talk so the teacher pushed me in the far right corner so I sat away from the other kids and I was right by the door,” he recalled, noting that if he saw a woman wearing a robe walk into his classroom, he “would have commented” on it.
“I would have said something,” he said “I would have tried to show off, I would have tried to get laughs. There’s no question.”
As he’s grown up, Johnson has continued to question his mom about wanting to keep him home from school that day.
“My mom cannot explain why she did not want me to go to school,” he said. Johnson explained that this is not a story he shares often, adding “I don’t get it.”
