{"id":892338,"date":"2026-10-23T21:46:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-23T21:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/892338\/"},"modified":"2026-10-23T21:46:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-23T21:46:11","slug":"hero-who-stopped-bend-school-shooter-haunted-by-encounter-i-didnt-save-everybody","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/892338\/","title":{"rendered":"Hero who stopped Bend school shooter haunted by encounter: \u2018I didn\u2019t save everybody\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

A string of innocuous choices made by an Oregon father brought him to the elementary school where he killed a mass shooter<\/a> in an act he believed would be his last.<\/p>\n

Police have credited <\/a>the quick thinking and decisive action of Bend carpenter Kaylub Giamanco for confronting 16-year-old Griffin J. John II and stopping the teen shooter\u2019s carnage on Oct. 15.<\/p>\n

The gunman had already killed a teacher and three young children<\/a> at Silver Rail Elementary School and could have continued his attack had Giamanco, 36, not randomly ended up at the crime scene.<\/p>\n

In an emotional and harrowing interview with Oregon Public Broadcasting <\/a>published on Friday, Giamanco recalled that fateful day.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always wanted to change the world, but I\u2019ve felt small. I\u2019m just a carpenter from Bend, Oregon. I was a nobody other than to my friends and family,\u201d he told OPB. \u201cI feel like if I\u2019m going to have a voice, then I\u2019ll be damned if I\u2019m not going to use it to change this world, to make it a better place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Giamanco\u2019s presence in the neighborhood near Silver Rail came after a series of seemingly benign decisions the carpenter made that Thursday about lunch.<\/p>\n

Giamanco packed a midday snack but changed his mind about eating it, instead opting to drive home to have leftover tacos with his wife, he said.<\/p>\n

And on his way home, Giamanco had briefly considered going to a masonry shop to buy some bolts he needed, but again opted to go home for the tacos.<\/p>\n

\"SilverPolice tape blocks access to Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Ore., on Oct. 16.Payton Bruni \/ AFP via Getty<\/p>\n

Those choices led him to Brentwood Avenue near his children\u2019s school just before 1 p.m., where he spotted a \u201cman in black\u201d with a long gun opening fire on a motorist and a woman mowing the school lawn, he recalled.<\/p>\n

Giamanco, who kept a .40 caliber handgun in his truck console, saw the killer toss his weapon over the school fence before climbing it himself. <\/p>\n

The father understood what was happening and \u201cthat\u2019s when panic filled into my brain, and that\u2019s when I opened my center console.\u201d<\/p>\n

Giamanco, who has two girls, 5 and 10, attending Silver Rail, called 911 but couldn\u2019t answer all of the dispatcher\u2019s questions. <\/p>\n

\u201cI said, \u2018I\u2019m sorry, I have to go in. People are going to die,\u2019\u201d said Giamanco.<\/p>\n

As Giamanco got closer to the school building, he kept a low profile and from his knees could hear the bloodshed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s 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, \u2018This is probably the last thing that I\u2019m ever going to do,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Giamanco crawled in through a shot-out window, reached the special education classroom and reracked his firearm in preparation for a deadly confrontation.<\/p>\n

He came upon the gunman and a teacher fighting for the killer\u2019s gun.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew that he did not know that I was there,\u201d Giamanco said. \u201cAnd I fired.\u201d<\/p>\n

The teacher fled, possibly believing Giamanco was a second attacker, he said. But the shooter was still alive and reaching for his gun. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe was scrambling for his weapon,\u201d Giamanco said. \u201cI looked at him and I shot him two more times to make sure that he couldn\u2019t move because I was afraid of him shooting anybody else.\u201d<\/p>\n

Police arrived shortly after and Giamanco pleaded with them to let him call his loved ones.<\/p>\n

\u201cI called my wife to tell her that I\u2019m not coming home for tacos,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Then he called his mother.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was just like, \u2018OK, baby, calm down. You did the right thing. You\u2019re a hero. You saved lives.\u2019 And I was just like, \u201cI didn\u2019t save everybody. I didn\u2019t get them all.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Law enforcement officials have universally praised Giamanco for acting fast. Within hours of the shooting, Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz said of Giamanco and the teacher who fought with the killer: \u201cI don\u2019t think we can underestimate or under-appreciate that courage.\u201d <\/p>\n

Giamanco said he\u2019s been struggling to sleep since the mass shooting and can\u2019t get that terrible day out of his head.<\/p>\n

\u201cI relive, I see faces, I hear voices, I hear screams,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The carpenter has not yet met the parents of the three children killed. Giamanco said he wants to tell them he\u2019s sorry for not doing more.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to apologize for not saving their babies,\u201d Giamanco said, his voice choking with emotion. \u201cThe gratitude for saving people\u2019s children is awesome, but there were ones that I didn\u2019t save.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A string of innocuous choices made by an Oregon father brought him to the elementary school where he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":892339,"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-892338","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\/892338","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=892338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/892339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=892338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=892338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=892338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}