New Girl star Jake Johnson revealed how his mother’s “gut feeling” saved his life.
The actor opened up about the incident on the podcast Dope as Usual.
In the episode, Jake tells the story of how he narrowly escaped a school shooting in 1988.
The actor who plays Nick in New Girl said: “I was sitting next to my mom, I was in fourth grade, out of nowhere, my mother turns to me and goes, ‘You’re not going to school tomorrow.’”
The following day was set to be a school trip and Jake pleaded with his mother to change her mind, however, she insisted against it and eventually he gave up.
The 45-year-old recalled: “The next day — May 20, 1988 — a woman walks into my elementary school through the door that my class was in, 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 shooting took place in Winnetka, Illinois and according to the ABC 7 Chicago report, the shooter was Laurie Dann.
The woman who was known to suffer from mental illness, walked into the second class classroom and claimed she was there to teach the kids about gun control before open firing on the class.
On the same day, Laurie also attempted to set fire to the family home of kids she had been babysitting that day and to another school.
Looking back on the situation, Jake admitted that his natural tendency to revert to comedy in bad moments would’ve escalated the situation.
He said: “I would have said something, I would have tried to show off, I would have tried to get laughs. There’s no question.”
Adding that he and his mother very rarely speak about the traumatic incident, he noted, “My mom cannot explain why she did not want me to go to school.”
