A week after a teenager burst into Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend and killed three children and a teacher, the man who stopped the shooter’s deadly spree is sharing his story.
Kaylub Giamanco, a 36-year-old carpenter whose two daughters attend the school where the shooting took place, spoke with Oregon Public Broadcasting in an exclusive article and video published Friday.
On Oct. 15, Giamanco witnessed the 16-year-old gunman fire his shotgun at a passing pickup and then enter the school. He followed the boy into the building, where he killed the teenager.
The Oregonian/OregonLive has reached out to Giamanco for comment.
Here are five takeaways from his interview with OPB.
Last-minute change of plans resulted in Giamanco driving past school as gunman arrived
Giamanco had packed a lunch and headed to work last Thursday after getting his daughters ready for school picture day.
When lunch time rolled around, Giamanco changed his mind and decided to drive home to eat leftovers with his wife, rather than eat the lunch he’d packed.
As he turned onto Brentwood Avenue, the road running along the south side of Silver Rail Elementary, he said he saw the teen gunman fire at a red pickup truck, then turn and fire at a person mowing the lawn, before tossing his shotgun over a school fence and climbing the fence.
“That’s when panic fled into my brain, and that’s when I opened my center console,” he told OPB. “I said, ‘No, no, no, no, no,’ and I grabbed my gun.”
He appears to believe fate put him there at that moment.
“I genuinely feel like I was supposed to be there,” he said. “If I wasn’t there, I just don’t know what would have happened.”
Giamanco pushed forward despite feeling panic and fear
Giamanco drove into the school parking lot while watching the teen cross the school grounds toward the building.
“I just was in full panic, like, ‘No, there’s children, there’s babies in there.’ I told my Siri to call 911,” he said, but the 911 dispatcher began asking him questions. He didn’t stay on the phone. “I said, ‘I’m sorry, I have to go in. People are going to die.’”
Giamanco pursued the boy, dropping to the ground and army-crawling along the side of the building.
“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.”
Giamanco said he felt like he was “having a heart attack almost the entire time.”
Hero teacher gave Giamanco time to make the shot
When Giamanco entered the building, he looked through the window of the special-education classroom where the teen shooter had gone and saw a teacher struggling with the boy, he said.
Police said that teacher, who has not yet been publicly identified, threw her cell phone at the gunman and tackled him.
The struggle gave Giamanco a clear shot. He entered the classroom and shot the gunman.
“She gave me the opportunity to make my shot without losing my life,” he said. “Without her, and that little spur-of-the-moment delay, I very much feel like I would have been facing the shooter head-on and we could have both died, or I could have died, and I felt like I was the last line of defense.”
Giamanco said the teacher ran from the school after he shot the teenager, possibly thinking he was an accomplice of the mass shooter.
“I would love to give her a hug because that’s a real true hero, to not have a weapon and to put yourself between your babies and a firearm,” he said.
What happened after Giamanco killed the gunman
Police arrived at the scene moments after Giamanco fired, he said. He put his gun on the ground and his hands in the air.
“I said, ‘We need your help over here right now, please, please, please,” he said.
Police let him pick up his gun and return to his truck, where he unloaded his weapon and called his wife.
“I call my wife to tell her that I’m not coming home for tacos and that I need her to get to the school immediately, that I had just had to shoot and kill somebody and that I had to watch him take the lives of children and teachers,” he said.
How Giamanco is doing now
Giamanco is still struggling with not being able to save everyone. He said he wants to meet with the families of the victims and cry with them.
“I want to apologize for not saving their babies,” he said. “That’s probably the biggest thing for me right now, because the gratitude for saving people’s children is awesome, but there was ones that I didn’t save … I feel like I failed them.”
At night, Giamanco said, he lies awake thinking about what happened.
“I see faces, I hear voices, I hear screams.”
But he feels a higher calling now, he said: to make a difference, and to advocate for safety measures at schools.
“I’ve always wanted to change the world, but I’ve felt small. I’m just a carpenter from Bend, Oregon. I was a nobody, other than to my friends and family,” he said. “I feel like if I’m going to have a voice, then I’ll be damned if I’m not going to use it to change this world, to make it a better place.”
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