JESUP, Ga. — It's a small town of just a little more than 10,000 people in Wayne County, Georgia.
"Everybody knows everybody," Taylor McGee said about his hometown of Jesup.
McGee, like many people Action News spoke with in Jesup, said he did not personally know Shannon Johnson but the story of his death has resonated with the community.
Several residents said Johnson moved out of Jesup when he was a young boy.
Johnson was one of 14 people killed in the mass shooting at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California.
Johnson died while shielding a co-worker from the bullets with his body.
Johnson's last words were said to be, "I got you," before he was killed.
"He made me real happy to be a Jesupinian and to hear about such a horrible tragedy and see the good come out of it," McGee said.
"He did something that most people wouldn't want to do," Jesup resident Justice Bourgoin said. "Maybe God spoke to him before he did it, before he sacrificed his own life."
The local Wayne County newspaper, The Press Sentinel, wrote an editorial about Johnson and said he died a hero like his father, Robert Johnson, who died in 1978.
Dink NeSmith wrote that Johnson's father worked in a pulp mill in Kentucky and fell off a ladder and died after he was trying to carry a co-worker out of a sewer.
NeSmith named the piece, "Like father, like son."
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