A Silver Rail Elementary School teacher tackled a teenage gunman inside a special-education classroom Thursday and fought him for control of a shotgun until an armed parent shot and killed the attacker, Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz said Friday. Krantz credited the teacher and parent Kaylub Giamanco with actions that "almost certainly" prevented additional deaths after the 16-year-old former student killed four people and wounded two others in Bend, Oregon.
Investigators identified the shooter as Griffin J. John II, who had attended Silver Rail as a special-needs student but was not enrolled in Bend-La Pine Schools at the time of the attack. Krantz said John tossed a Maverick 12-gauge shotgun over a chain-link fence, climbed onto campus, and shot out locked entry doors before entering a classroom immediately to his left and firing as many as 15 rounds. Three children and a teacher died in that room; a 7-year-old and a 54-year-old teacher were seriously injured.
Seconds on the sidewalk
At least two drivers saw John approach the school with the weapon. Krantz said one pickup driver verbally confronted the teen, who fired at the truck and struck it at least three times before the driver drove away to call 911. Giamanco, the father of two Silver Rail students, followed John into the parking lot, retrieved a legally secured .40-caliber pistol from his vehicle, and entered the building behind him, according to police.
Inside the classroom, Krantz said, a teacher who was not among the fatalities threw her cellphone at John, then tackled him and grappled for the shotgun. She was not seriously injured in the struggle. Giamanco entered while the two were fighting and shot John multiple times, ending the attack before officers arrived. Police recovered 44 rounds of ammunition with or near the teen and are still tracing how he obtained the shotgun.
Questions for the district
The timeline Krantz outlined — less than five minutes from the first emergency call to a secured scene — underscores how little time elapsed between a fence-line breach and mass casualties in a classroom designed for vulnerable students. Bend-La Pine officials have not detailed whether additional security staffing was on site at midday, and state lawmakers are likely to revisit Oregon's secure-storage and campus-access rules as families mourn.
Giamanco has not spoken publicly at length; his mother told reporters he has two daughters at the school. Krantz declined to treat the parent as a suspect, saying the community owed him gratitude alongside the teacher he described as heroic. For Silver Rail, the immediate work is identifying victims, supporting survivors, and explaining how a former student with a pump-action shotgun reached a locked door faster than help could.