Follow-Up: Father Who Stopped the Bend School Shooter Speaks for the First Time: 'I Have to Go In'

The October 15 shooting at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon, killed three students and a teacher before the 16-year-old gunman, Griffin J. John, was shot dead by a parent who intervened. On Friday, October 23, that parent — Kaylub Giamanco, 36, a carpenter — gave his first full account of that day in an interview with Oregon Public Broadcasting. GSM reports from that interview.

Giamanco's two daughters attend the school. At midday on the day of the shooting, he was driving home to have lunch with his wife when he saw the gunman fire at a Toyota pickup truck, then toward a woman mowing the school's lawn, before throwing his rifle over the school fence and climbing in after it. 'That's when panic flooded into my brain,' he said. 'I opened my center console and I just said, "No, no, no, no, no," and I grabbed my gun and I put the magazine in it and I racked the action, and then I proceeded into the parking lot. I saw him walking all the way across to the school, and I just was full panic. Like, no, there's children, there's babies in there.'

He used a voice command to call 911 and followed the gunman while staying out of his sight. As the dispatcher asked detailed questions he had no time to answer, he said: 'I'm sorry, I have to go in. People are going to die.'

After the gunman fired two shots into the school's double doors, Giamanco got prone and crawled along the windows. 'That's when I started hearing children pleading for their lives. And then I started hearing gunfire, and I just started Army-crawling faster and faster,' he said. 'I told myself, "This is probably the last thing I'm ever going to do."' He climbed through a shot-out window and entered a classroom where a teacher was struggling with the rifle-armed gunman. 'I knew that he did not know that I was there,' he said, 'and so at that point, I swung the door out and open, and I stepped in and I fired.' When the gunman scrambled for his weapon, Giamanco fired twice more to stop him. Police arrived soon afterward.

Within minutes, Giamanco called his wife and then his mother, telling her he had had to take the life of someone who might be a child. His mother told him: 'Okay, baby, calm down. You did the right thing. You're a hero. You saved lives.' He said he broke down: 'I didn't save everybody. I didn't get them all.' He said he still does not know the name of the teacher who fought the gunman and wants to thank her and give her a hug: 'She gave me the opportunity to make my shot without losing my life. She is a real true hero — to not have a weapon and to put yourself in between your babies and a firearm.'

Giamanco said he also wants to meet the victims' families, 'just cry with them, hold them,' and apologize for not saving their children. He said using his voice to raise awareness and money for school security, starting in Bend, is what now gives him strength: 'If I'm going to have a voice, then I'll be damned if I'm going to use it to change this world to make it a better place.' Bend police's previously released timeline matches his account: a teacher grappled with the gunman, buying time, before the parent entered the school and shot him.

Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)

Photo: 图：俄勒冈州Bend市中心的Deschutes公共图书馆（资料照片）。Paul2520摄，CC0，经Wikimedia Commons。 / File photo: Deschutes Public Library in downtown Bend, Oregon. Photo by Paul2520, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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