Bend police chief says teacher almost certainly helped prevent more bloodshed
Kaylub Giamanco, the 36-year-old carpenter who shot dead a gunman attacking the elementary school attended by his two daughters in Bend, Oregon, has described the attack that killed three pupils and a teacher at Silver Rail Elementary School earlier this month. Speaking in an interview with Oregon Public Broadcasting that aired Friday, Giamanco said he heard children pleading for their lives as he moved toward the building, and that he remains haunted by the children he was unable to save.
Giamanco said he wants to apologise for not saving the children who died. “I want to apologise for not saving their babies,” he said of his thoughts for the parents of the children killed. “The gratitude for saving people’s children is awesome, but there were ones that I didn’t save.”
The route he took that morning was ordinary until it was not. Giamanco told OPB the day began with breakfast and packed lunches, and that he and his wife spent extra time getting their daughters ready because it was school picture day. A carpenter, he took lunch to work but decided to go home to eat with his wife instead. That decision brought him past the school as the attack began.
He first wondered whether someone carrying a long gun was playing a prank, then saw the man fire at a pickup truck and head toward the school. Giamanco retrieved a handgun from his vehicle and called emergency services, telling the broadcaster: “I’m sorry, I have to go in. People are going to die.”
The attacker shot through the school’s locked glass doors. Giamanco crawled toward the building, hearing children pleading for their lives and more gunfire, and then through a shattered window into a classroom where a teacher was struggling with the gunman. He opened the door and fired. Giamanco told OPB he fired again when the attacker reached for his weapon, then placed his own gun on the ground and raised his hands as an officer appeared.
He said the decision ran through his mind before he moved: “I told myself this is probably the last thing that I’m ever going to do,” he said. After the shooting, Giamanco described feeling like the “last line of defence” between the children and the gunman, and said he “was supposed to be there” that day.
Afterwards he called his wife to say he would not be home for lunch and that she needed to get to the school immediately. He then called his mother. “Mum, I just had to take the life of what I think is might be a child because he ran into my daughter’s school with a gun,” he said.
Giamanco credited a teacher who fought the attacker with giving him the chance to intervene without losing his own life, and said: “I would love to give her a hug because that’s a real true hero.” Police said the teacher who confronted the attacker threw her phone at him, tackled him and fought to take his shotgun.
Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz said she “almost certainly helped prevent more bloodshed.” Giamanco said he wants to meet the families of the children who were killed and “cry with them and hold them”.
Three students and a teacher were killed at Silver Rail Elementary School. The students who died were all boys, aged five, eight and 11, and police said they were among six people shot in a classroom at the school. Alongside the teacher who was killed, another child and a teacher were wounded.
The youngest of the children killed was Rhoam Summer, 5. His father said the family was “broken and lost”. The other two boys have not been publicly named, at their families’ request. Megan Lambert, 25, the teacher who was killed, was working in what her family described as her “dream job”. They said: “She always fought for the underdog and those with special needs.”
The injured teacher has been named as Becky Drury, 54. She said in a statement shared with US media that the gunman shot her as she tried to shut her classroom door. In an earlier BBC News report, the injured teacher said she pretended to be dead to survive.
Police identified the gunman as Griffin J John II, a 16-year-old former pupil who had attended special education classes at the school. His motive remains under investigation.
Giamanco’s name became public less than a day after the shooting. His mother, Kenda Freeman, read a family statement saying he was not seeking recognition and asking for privacy. Shortly after the attack, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek praised his intervention while acknowledging its emotional cost: “Your actions carry a heavy emotional burden, and I just want you to know that my thoughts are with you as well,” she said.
Giamanco told OPB he now lies awake after his family goes to bed, replaying the attack. “I relive, I see faces, I hear voices, I hear screams.”