Jake Johnson Shares How His Mom's 'Gut Feeling' Saved Him From 1988 School Shooting

A mother’s intuition saved Jake Johnson‘s life when he was a kid.

In a new interview, the 45-year-old New Girl actor shared that his mom’s “gut feeling” saved him from possibly getting killed in a school shooting back in 1988.

“I was sitting next to my mom, I was in fourth grade,” Jake recalled while appearing on the Dope as Usual podcast. “Out of nowhere, my mother turns to me and goes, ‘You’re not going to school tomorrow.’”

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“And I go ‘huh,’” Jake continued. “With my mom growing up, when she said something that’s just how it went down.”

Jake, who was around nine or 10 at the time, first agreed not to go to school, but then reminded his mom that his class was going on a field trip the next day, so he argued that he wouldn’t physically be in school. After some hesitation, Jake‘s mom allowed him to go.

“The next day — May 20, 1988 — a woman walks into my elementary school through the door that my class was in,” Jake said. “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, where she entered a second grade classroom, and said she was there to teach them about guns, according to ABC7 Chicago. She then opened fire and Wounded five (not seven) students, killing one.

After fleeing the scene, she broke into a local family’s home, taking their son hostage and shooting him before killing herself.

“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,” Jake added, 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, I would have tried to show off, I would have tried to get laughs,” Jake said. “There’s no question.”

Over the years, Jake said that he’s questioned his mom about why she wouldn’t let him go to school that day.

“My mom cannot explain why she did not want me to go to school,” Jake said, adding that his mom has told him, “‘I don’t know. I had a feeling in my gut if your kid goes to school today, you’re never going to see him again.’”

If you missed it, Jake also recently talked about working with a now-Grammy-winning star when she was just a kid.