{"id":889900,"date":"2026-10-21T10:16:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T10:16:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/889900\/"},"modified":"2026-10-21T10:16:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T10:16:16","slug":"rhoam-summer-5-is-the-youngest-child-killed-in-a-us-school-shooting-his-family-is-asking-the-world-to-draw-for-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/889900\/","title":{"rendered":"Rhoam Summer, 5, is the youngest child killed in a US school shooting. His family is asking the world to draw for him"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Rhoam Summer, the 5-year-old who was among the four victims fatally shot<\/a> at an Oregon elementary school, is the youngest person ever killed in a deliberate mass attack at a US school, according to his family\u2019s attorney and experts who track school shootings.\n <\/p>\n

\n The littlest victim, his two classmates and a teacher were gunned down by a former student Thursday in a classroom dedicated to children with special needs at Silver Rail Elementary School in the central Oregon city of Bend.\n <\/p>\n

\n It was 36th shooting in the United States this year on K-12 school grounds, according to CNN\u2019s analysis<\/a> of multiple databases, including the Gun Violence Archive.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cSadly, and maybe callously, I\u2019m not optimistic there are going to be any meaningful changes,\u201d David Riedman, an Idaho State University assistant professor and data scientist who founded the K-12 Shooting Database<\/a>, said of gun violence in US schools.\n <\/p>\n

\n Rhoam is the youngest victim in 176 planned, gun-related attacks<\/a> at schools since 1966 \u2013 in which 762 people were killed or wounded, including the four deaths at Silver Rail, according to Riedman\u2019s research. Teacher Megan Lambert was killed along with Rhoam and two others, aged 8 and 11, police said. Reidman\u2019s database includes incidents in which in a gun is fired, brandished or in which a bullet strikes K-12 school property.\n <\/p>\n

\n School shootings in the US have declined for the past two years and the same is expected this year, according to Riedman\u2019s research. In 2025, his data showed 235 school shootings compared to a peak of 352 in 2023.<\/a>\n <\/p>\n

\n Mass shootings at elementary schools are rare, experts say.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt\u2019s rarer than high schools because the children are younger, and most school shooters are between 13 and 17. So they\u2019re usually either middle school or high school students, but there are a fair number at elementary schools, too. It\u2019s about half are at high schools, and then about a quarter at elementary, and a quarter are at middle schools,\u201d Riedman said.\n <\/p>\n

\"His<\/p>\n

\n A group of attorneys retained by Rhoam\u2019s parents, in a statement, said the boy is the youngest person ever killed in a US school shooting.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cNo child should have to experience or worry about violence in their school or parent fear for the safety of their kid in school,\u201d one of the attorneys, Tim Williams, told CNN on Tuesday.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cYou would expect it more to happen at a high school as opposed to a grade school. It\u2019s just these poor parents that have really no inkling of caution because your kid\u2019s entering kindergarten. You\u2019re not going to think your school\u2019s going to get shot up if your kid\u2019s in kindergarten. I don\u2019t even have words for it,\u201d Williams added.\n <\/p>\n

\n In a statement, Rhoam\u2019s parents, Kelik and Lillian Summer, recalled his kindness.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cAnytime there were guests in our home, he would pull out cups to get everyone drinks or make sure everyone had a snack or make sure everyone had a stuffy to cuddle,\u201d the parents said. \u201cHe wanted to share everything he had. His heart knew no limits and it grew with him every single day. We were so proud of who he was and who he was growing to be.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n His parents asked people to draw in his honor.\n <\/p>\n

\"Rhoam<\/p>\n

\n \u201cRhoam was not a child art prodigy, but he had the purest heart and he put love into every scribble, splash or paint, or smashed leaf he tried to shape,\u201d they said.\n <\/p>\n

\n Last Thursday, a 16-year-old shooter forced his way into the Oregon school by firing into the glass panes of an external set of doors, according to police. He was identified as Griffin J. John II<\/a>, a former special needs<\/a> student at the school, Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz said.\n <\/p>\n

\n A teacher, who was not injured, threw her cellphone at the shooter, tackled him and tried to get the gun, the police chief said. Kaylub Giamanco, whose children attend the school, followed the suspect and shot him to death.\n <\/p>\n

\n Becky Drury, a 54-year-old inclusion educational assistant<\/a> from Bend, and Saylor Graham, 7, were injured in the shooting.\n <\/p>\n

\n The two deadliest elementary school shootings in the US involved victims between the ages of six and 11. At the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting<\/a> in Newtown, Connecticut, a former student on December 14, 2012, killed six adults and 20 children, who were 6 and 7 years old. In 2022, the 19 children killed<\/a> at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, were between 9 and 11 years old.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWith Sandy Hook, it didn\u2019t make a difference, much of a difference really,\u201d James Alan Fox, a professor at Northeastern University who, with USA Today and The Associated Press, helped create the Mass Killing Database<\/a>, said of stemming gun violence in schools.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe had lots of young children killed in Uvalde. It didn\u2019t make a difference. The fact this boy is the youngest, I guess you could say it will have an effect, but really no difference in substance in terms of five versus six, versus seven versus eight. And for the families, it doesn\u2019t matter, obviously.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rhoam Summer, the 5-year-old who was among the four victims fatally shot at an Oregon elementary school, is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":889901,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-889900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=889900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889900\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/889901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=889900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=889900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=889900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}