Carpenter Shoots Dead School Gunman in Bend, Oregon: 'I Have to Go In'

Kaylub Giamanco, 36, stopped a school shooting at Silver Rail Elementary in Bend, Oregon, killing the gunman after three children and a teacher had already died.

'I Didn't Save Everybody': How Kaylub Giamanco Stopped the Silver Rail School Shooter

A 36-year-old carpenter named Kaylub Giamanco happened to be driving past Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon, at 12:58 p.m. on Oct. 15 when he spotted a 16-year-old armed with a shotgun approaching the building. Minutes later, Giamanco had followed the shooter inside and killed him. As opb.org reports in an exclusive interview, police credit Giamanco with saving many lives at a school of more than 400 children.

By the time Giamanco intervened, the gunman had already fired into a special education classroom, killing three children — ages 5, 8 and 11 — and a 25-year-old teacher. Two other people were seriously injured.

A Chain of Small Decisions

That morning had started like any other for the Giamanco family. He and his wife had dressed their two daughters a little more carefully than usual — Oct. 15 was picture day. After dropping the girls off at Silver Rail, Giamanco drove to a job site northeast of Bend.

He had packed a lunch but decided around midday to head home and eat leftover tacos with his wife instead. He thought about stopping at a masonry shop and picking up some bolts he needed, but skipped both. He was four blocks from home when he turned onto Brentwood Avenue, the road running along the south side of the school.

"I've always wanted to change the world, but I've felt small. I'm just a carpenter from Bend, Oregon," Giamanco told OPB. "I was a nobody other than to my friends and family."

'Panic Fled Into My Brain'

Turning onto Brentwood, Giamanco noticed a figure in black carrying a long gun. He initially assumed it was a prank or a BB gun. Then the shooter fired twice at a red pickup truck and once more at a woman mowing the school lawn. When the gunman threw the shotgun over the school fence and climbed it himself, Giamanco said, "that's when panic fled into my brain, and that's when I opened my center console."

His heart dropped for a moment, he said, as he wondered whether his .40 caliber handgun — one he rarely used and described as "collecting dust" — would be there. It was. He loaded the magazine, drove into the school parking lot and called 911 via Siri while tracking the shooter across the grounds.

"I said, 'I'm sorry, I have to go in. People are going to die,'" he told the dispatcher, then ended the call.

Army-Crawling Toward Gunfire

Giamanco hopped the fence and trailed the shooter at a distance, using a wallball court as cover. He heard the gunman fire two shots through the school's glass double doors. Giamanco then ran to the building and got down on his hands and knees, crawling along the exterior 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 that I'm ever going to do."

He reached a ground-level window that had already been shot out and crawled through it. Moving on hands and knees through the corridor, he made his way to the special education classroom on his left. He re-racked his weapon to confirm a live round was chambered, then looked through the classroom window.

Inside, a teacher was struggling with the shooter, both visible to him in profile.

"I knew that he did not know that I was there," Giamanco said.

The Confrontation

He pushed the door open and stepped in. The teacher and the shooter both fell to the floor. The teacher then rose and ran from the room — in fear, Giamanco assumed, believing him to be a second attacker. Giamanco looked down at the shooter.

"He was scrambling for his weapon," he said. "I looked at him and I shot him two more times to make sure that he couldn't move because I was afraid of him shooting anybody else."

He could already hear sirens. Giamanco left the classroom to search for the teacher who had fled, then set his gun on the ground and raised his hands as the first officer arrived on scene in body armor and carrying a rifle. Only minutes had passed since his 911 call.

'You're a Hero'

As police and first responders converged on Silver Rail, Giamanco walked back to his truck. He unloaded his weapon, placed it on the floorboard and called his wife.

"I called my wife to tell her that I'm not coming home for tacos," he said. He told her to get to the school immediately — he had just fatally shot someone who had been killing children and teachers.

"She was just like, 'Okay, baby, calm down. You did the right thing. You're a hero. You saved lives,'" he recounted. "And I was just like, 'I didn't save everybody. I didn't get them all.'"

Word of Giamanco's actions spread first over emergency dispatch: "Shooter has been neutralized."

Giamanco told OPB that years of life experience had shaped him for the moment — helping raise six younger siblings as the oldest child of a single mother, applying a makeshift tourniquet to save his brother's life after a motorbike accident, and informal military training he received from Iraq War veterans. He believes that history prepared him for what he did at Silver Rail Elementary on Oct. 15.

Source: NYT US News