On October 15, Griffin J. John II, 16, entered Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon, with a 12-gauge shotgun. He shot out a window to get inside and killed four people, including three students and a teacher.

John appeared to target a special needs classroom. Two other people were critically injured during the attack, including a girl, age 7, who used a wheelchair, and a teacher.

The rampage ended when Kaylub Giamanco, 36, an armed bystander and father of two girls who attend the school, tracked John through the building and shot him. Giamanco later described the terror he heard while moving toward the gunman.

In a seated interview with Oregon Public Broadcasting, Giamanco recounted how an ordinary lunch break became a deadly emergency. The carpenter was driving home to eat leftovers with his wife when he saw John firing outside the school.

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Giamanco said John fired twice at a red pickup truck and then fired at a woman mowing the school lawn. He then watched John hop a fence and begin the attack inside Silver Rail Elementary School.

Two of Giamanco’s daughters attend the school, and he was close enough to witness John’s gunfire before the teenager crossed the fence. His response began with the handgun stored in his center console.

“That’s when panic fled into my brain, and that’s when I opened my center console,” Giamanco said.

The father reached for his .40 caliber handgun and contacted a dispatcher. Though he understood the danger, his words made clear why he was moving toward the school rather than away from it.

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“I said, ‘I’m sorry, I have to go in. People are going to die’,” he told the dispatcher before entering the school.

Giamanco quietly moved toward the shooter as John fired two shots at the door. From a wallball court, he rushed toward the building on his hands and knees, with the sounds inside becoming more horrifying.

He later recalled hearing “children pleading for their lives” as the massacre continued inside the school.

Giamanco kept moving as John fatally shot three children and a teacher. He later described the decision to crawl faster despite believing the effort could be the final thing he ever did.

“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, and I told myself this is probably the last thing that I’m ever going to do.”

At a lower window that had already been shot out, Giamanco crawled into the school. He reloaded his handgun to make certain he was “ready to go.”

Looking through a classroom window, Giamanco saw a teacher physically struggling with John. He swung open the classroom door and fired at the shooter as John tried to reach his gun.

“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.”

According to Giamanco’s account, he did not enter blindly. He approached quietly, used the wallball court on his way to the building, crawled through the damaged lower window, and reloaded before reaching the classroom.

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"I started hearing children PLEADING for their lives. And then I started hearing gunfire and I just started army crawling faster and faster. And I told myself, this is probably the last thing that I'm ever going to do." "I have to go in. People are going to die." "I crawled through the bottom window that was shot out and continued onto the rug inside where there's a little breezeway with stairs." "And then the special needs classroom was to my left. At that point, I was on the ground on my hands and knees. I re-racked my weapon to make sure that a live round came so that I knew that I was ready to go." "And then I peeked through the window. And at this point I found my opportunity. And I'd seen a teacher on the left struggling with the gunman on the right with the rifle." "And I knew that they were on both sides of me, and I knew that he did not know that I was there. And so at that point I swung the door out and open and I stepped in and I fired." This man deserves the Presidential Medal of FREEDOM! — Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) October 23, 2026

Inside, a teacher was still physically fighting the armed teenager, and John was trying to recover his weapon after Giamanco fired. Giamanco fired twice more because he feared John would shoot somebody else.

Those shots neutralized John and ended the massacre. Giamanco’s account is brutal, but his actions are equally plain: an armed father heard children begging for their lives, entered the school, confronted the killer, and saved lives.

There is no bureaucratic fog around what happened in those final moments. Giamanco went toward the gunfire, made sure the attacker could not continue, and deserves recognition for the lives his courage preserved.

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