A Garden State Parkway toll worker listened to her "gut instinct" and it may have saved her life.
© Tariq Zehawi/NorthJersey.com / USA TODAY NETWORK
(Barnegat, NJ) – We’ve all had that feeling before. An ominous sense you just can’t shake. A premonition that something bad is about to happen. Most often it’s just that — a bad feeling. But sometimes it turns out to be true, and that’s what happened recently for Jessica Daley, who works as a toll collector at the Jersey Shore.
Daley says she was getting ready for work recently when one of those bad feelings washed over her. It was early on a Friday morning and the feeling wouldn’t go away. She spoke to NBC News 4 New York and said “I had just like a really like, bad gut feeling that something was going to happen. Like something terrible was going to happen.” Daley adds a second feeling hit her hours later. “I actually had a feeling that I was going to get in a car accident. And it was so strong, that I actually called out and I literally never call out of work.”
Calling out of work in that fashion could have saved her life, and likely saved her a trip to the hospital at the least. Four hours or so after she phoned and said she’d be missing work, a garbage truck plowed into the Barnegat Toll Plaza where she works. In fact, the truck struck the booth she typically works in.
After co-workers called her and told her what happened, Daley said “My immediate response honestly, I dropped to my knees and just started crying. I was praying for everybody involved and thanking God that I had that feeling to call out. As of recently, I started getting a lot closer to God in the last like three months…I believe 100% that was God looking out for me.”
The New Jersey State Police are investigating the crash, and the New Jersey Turnpike Authority says the fill-in toll worker was briefly hospitalized then released later that day. And on Saturday, Daley was back at work in her usual spot.
Daley’s mom Jennifer also shared her feelings: “I think her gut instinct was an angel or a premonition from a guardian angel telling her not to go in to protect her. It’s hard to feel so happy that my daughter wasn’t there, and at the same time, feel heartbreak for the ones that were involved.”
If nothing else, it’s sure to make many think twice when they get one of those “bad feelings”.
