In the early hours of a Sunday in November 2022, a quiet off-campus neighborhood in Moscow, Idaho, was shattered by a crime that would grip the nation. Four University of Idaho students—Maddie Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin—were fatally stabbed in their home on King Road.
Now, for the first time, one of the victims’ closest friends is publicly recounting the harrowing moments that led to his discovery of the scene. Hunter Johnson, then a student himself, recalls an inexplicable urge that seized him in the dead of that night.
“It was around 3 a.m., and something in my gut told me to lock the door to my girlfriend’s apartment,” Johnson, now 24, stated. “I’d never done that before. There was no sound, no reason for it, just a feeling I couldn’t ignore.”
He was at the apartment of his girlfriend, Emily Alandt, along with her roommate. The unusual action woke both women, and the three spent a tense half-hour together in the living room before returning to bed, unaware that the unfolding tragedy was mere steps away.
Less than an hour later, their four friends were attacked in their nearby residence. Two other roommates present in the home survived the incident.
The following morning, a call for help from one of those survivors brought Johnson and Alandt to the King Road house. Johnson was the first to enter and ascend to the second floor, where he encountered a scene of profound horror.
“You walk in and the mind struggles to process it,” Johnson described. “You’re asking, ‘Is this real?’ The full weight of what you’re seeing doesn’t hit immediately. It takes a moment for the reality to solidify, and when it does, everything changes.”
Reflecting on that day, Alandt, 23, added, “It was the end of our innocence. That was the last day we lived as kids.”
In the aftermath, 29-year-old Bryan Kohberger was arrested and charged with four counts of first-degree murder. His trial, a proceeding awaited by a community and a country marked by the case, is slated to begin this summer, with jury selection potentially starting before the end of July.
The upcoming legal proceedings aim to provide answers in a case that transformed a quiet college town into the center of a national tragedy, a loss forever imprinted on the friends who were among the first to confront its devastating reality.
