IT was the call from her mother to wish her a 'happy new year' that yesterday saved a teacher from becoming a fatality at the start of 2013.

The woman, who is the mother of two, was lying in bed at the stroke of midnight when her mother called.

Her cellular phone was being charged at the other end of the bed, and she had to turn her head in that direction. Her feet were now where her head had been.

"Yes, mommy," she answered.

"I just called to tell you happy new year," her mother said, "and thanks for all that you've done for me through the year."

Outside her yard in a community in the Waltham Park Road area, the teacher could hear the usual new year's celebratory gunshots ringing out from illegal firearms. Her mother heard them too. Nothing unusual for a night like this.

But five minutes into the conversation, the teacher heard a crashing sound.

"I thought something had come through the window," she told the Jamaica Observer.

But the window was intact. Then she felt a burning sensation in her right thigh and looked down. Blood was oozing from a wound. There was also a hole in her ceiling where there was none moments before.

"Gunshot! Gunshot! Mi get shot," she screamed into the phone.

She was shortly after rushed to the University Hospital for treatment.

Recounting the ordeal yesterday, the woman was thankful that her mother had called.

"If she never called me, and I never moved, that shot would have caught me in my head, because that's where my head was," she said.

The woman is also thankful that her 14-year-old daughter had gone to the annual fireworks and stage show at the Kingston waterfront to ring in the new year.

"She would have been lying there watching TV," she said.