Four days after a gunman opened fire inside Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon, the community knows the names of its dead and of the father credited with stopping the attack. Teacher Megan Lambert, 25, and three children — ages 5, 8 and 11 — were killed on Thursday; a 7-year-old pupil and a 54-year-old teacher remain in critical condition. The suspected shooter, 16-year-old Griffin J. John II, was shot dead inside the school within minutes of the first 911 call.
The man who intervened has been identified by his mother as Kaylub Giamanco, 36, a carpenter whose two daughters attend Silver Rail. According to police accounts, Giamanco was in his car when the teenager tossed a 12-gauge shotgun over a low fence, fired at a passing truck, and blasted through the glass of a locked exterior door. Giamanco retrieved a legally secured pistol from his vehicle and followed the shooter into a classroom, where a learning specialist had already thrown her phone at the gunman and tackled him. Giamanco shot the attacker as the struggle unfolded. Officers arrived at 1:02pm, three minutes after the first call. In a phone call to his mother shortly afterwards, Giamanco reportedly said: “Mum, I couldn’t save them all.”
What investigators are still tracing
Search warrants are now being executed to establish the suspect’s motive and, crucially, how a 16-year-old obtained a Maverick 88 pump-action shotgun and 44 rounds of ammunition. Police say the teenager shot through locked doors to enter the building; the FBI’s Portland office is assisting the investigation. The families of the two other children killed, aged 8 and 11, have asked that their names be withheld. Lambert was remembered as a teacher devoted to students with special needs; five-year-old Rhoam Summer was described by his grandfather as bright, fearless and fun-loving.
A town, and a country, take stock
The political reverberations arrived quickly. Former President Donald Trump praised Giamanco as a “great hero,” while Oregon Governor Tina Kotek acknowledged the heavy burden carried by those who intervened. Giamanco’s family has asked for privacy even as his actions dominate the national conversation — a reminder that the heroism narrative, however true, cannot erase what the families of Bend lost. For a town still learning the details of how Thursday unfolded, the harder questions about a teenager, a shotgun and a locked door are only beginning.
