In the early hours of a November morning in 2022, a quiet off-campus street in Moscow, Idaho, became the scene of 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 residence on King Road.
Now, for the first time, a close friend of the victims is sharing his account of the harrowing aftermath. Hunter Johnson, who was among the first to discover the scene, recalls an inexplicable feeling of dread that preceded the grim finding. In the hours before the crime was known, he experienced an unusual urge to secure the door of his girlfriend’s nearby apartment, an act he described as out of character and driven by an unconscious premonition.
“There was no reason for it, no sound or disturbance,” Johnson stated. “It was a feeling I’d never had before—something just told me to lock the door.”
He and his girlfriend, along with a roommate, awoke briefly but returned to sleep, unaware that less than an hour later, an attack was unfolding just down the street. The following morning, a call from a surviving roommate at the King Road house prompted them to investigate reports of strange noises from the night before.
It was Johnson who entered the home and made the devastating discovery in a second-floor bedroom. The encounter marked an irreversible end to what he described as their youthful innocence. “In that moment, you’re confronted with a reality that doesn’t seem possible,” he reflected. “The weight of what you’re seeing takes time to truly sink in.”
The surviving roommates, who were present in the home during the incident but were not harmed, alerted friends the next day after growing concerned.
In the weeks that followed, 28-year-old Bryan Kohberger was arrested and charged with four counts of murder in connection with the stabbings. His trial, one of the most anticipated in recent memory, is scheduled to proceed later this summer, with jury selection potentially beginning by the end of July.
For those who knew the victims, the tragedy remains a defining rupture—a loss not only of four young lives, but of the security and simplicity that once defined their community.
