Mom of 5th-grade student recalls terrifying moment son texted her about deadly Oregon school shooting

The mother of a fifth-grade student at Silver Rail Elementary School recalled the terrifying moment she received a text message from her son saying that there had been a shooting.

“Mom there was a school shooting we’re ok tho,” the message read.

“I instantly turned to social media, and it was blasted all over,” Jenn Johnston told NBC News in a written message.

About 20 minutes earlier, Johnston said she had received an automated phone call and text from the Bend, Oregon, school telling her that there was a lockdown in place.

After receiving the text from her son, she and her husband jumped into the car and drove to the school. Johnston said parents were rerouted to a nearby church, where they waited for hours with few updates from police and school officials.

“The kids were bused from the school to the church and were released to parents from youngest to oldest,” Johnston said. “My son, being in fifth grade, was the very last class to be released.”

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It wasn’t until about 6 p.m. when her son jumped off the school bus and ran into her arms.

“My son came running to me in tears,” she said.

The shooting happened around 1 p.m. local time Thursday after a suspected teenager armed with a long gun gained entry to the school by firing through the locked doors.

A teacher and three children, ages 5, 8 and 11, were killed. Two other people, a 7-year-old and another teacher, were critically injured.

The gunman was a 16-year-old Bend resident, police said. He was shot and killed by a good Samaritan who pursued him, authorities said.

Justin Penfield said he and his wife were together when they received a notification from the school. A friend who was already at the school told them to get to the building quickly, he said.

Penfield recalled seeing a “massive police presence” and finding his son’s kindergarten class already outside. Penfield said that, as he walked his son back to their car, he saw a man standing next to a pickup truck with “seven or eight gunshot holes in his truck.”

According to Penfield, the man told him he was driving back from lunch when he saw someone throw what appeared to be a shotgun over the fence and then jump into the school’s playground.

The man said he yelled to ask the guy what he was doing because he thought it was odd, Penfield said, recounting his conversation with the man.

According to Penfield, the man told him the gunman turned and opened fire on his truck. Penfield said the man told him he sped away and called 911.

Mindy Miranda said her 8-year-old daughter was in her third-grade classroom upstairs when shots rang out.

She said they are trying to process what happened “as a family and as a community.”

“I never in a thousand years thought it would be at Silver Rail Elementary, a place that I safely drop our daughter off at every day, and she goes to learn and to thrive and to be a part of a great group of people there,” she said.

Bend Mayor Melanie Kebler said at a vigil Thursday evening that the shooting was a dark day for the city and “there are simply no words for the loss that we have suffered.”