Hero who stopped Bend school shooter haunted by encounter: ‘I didn’t save everybody’

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

Police have credited 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’s carnage on Oct. 15.

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

In an emotional and harrowing interview with Oregon Public Broadcasting published on Friday, Giamanco recalled that fateful day.

“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 told OPB. “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.”

Giamanco’s presence in the neighborhood near Silver Rail came after a series of seemingly benign decisions the carpenter made that Thursday about lunch.

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.

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.

Those choices led him to Brentwood Avenue near his children’s school just before 1 p.m., where he spotted a “man in black” with a long gun opening fire on a motorist and a woman mowing the school lawn, he recalled.

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.

The father understood what was happening and “that’s when panic filled into my brain, and that’s when I opened my center console.”

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Giamanco, who has two girls, 5 and 10, attending Silver Rail, called 911 but couldn’t answer all of the dispatcher’s questions.

“I said, ‘I’m sorry, I have to go in. People are going to die,’” said Giamanco.

As Giamanco got closer to the school building, he kept a low profile and from his knees could hear the bloodshed.

“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,’” he said.

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

He came upon the gunman and a teacher fighting for the killer’s gun.

“I knew that he did not know that I was there,” Giamanco said. “And I fired.”

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

“He was scrambling for his weapon,” Giamanco said. “I looked at him and I shot him two more times to make sure that he couldn’t move because I was afraid of him shooting anybody else.”

Police arrived shortly after and Giamanco pleaded with them to let him call his loved ones.

“I called my wife to tell her that I’m not coming home for tacos,” he said.

Then he called his mother.

“She was just like, ‘OK, baby, calm down. You did the right thing. You’re a hero. You saved lives.’ And I was just like, “I didn’t save everybody. I didn’t get them all.’”

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: “I don’t think we can underestimate or under-appreciate that courage.”

Giamanco said he’s been struggling to sleep since the mass shooting and can’t get that terrible day out of his head.

“I relive, I see faces, I hear voices, I hear screams,” he said.

The carpenter has not yet met the parents of the three children killed. Giamanco said he wants to tell them he’s sorry for not doing more.

“I want to apologize for not saving their babies,” Giamanco said, his voice choking with emotion. “The gratitude for saving people’s children is awesome, but there were ones that I didn’t save.”