On October 15, Griffin J. John II, 16, entered Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon, and killed four people: three students and a teacher. He entered by shooting out a window and was armed with a 12-gauge shotgun. He appears to have targeted a special-needs classroom.
Two others were injured in the attack. John’s violent rampage ended when an armed bystander, Kaylub Giamanco, 36, tracked John and neutralized him with his firearm. The account is horrifying: children were begging for their lives (via NY Post):
🚨 NEW: Kaylub Giamanco, the HERO father who TOOK OUT the Bend, Oregon elementary school shooter last week, tells the story for the first time "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." "I have to go in. People are going to die." "I crawled through the bottom window that was shot out and continued onto the rug inside where there's a little breezeway with stairs." "And then the special needs classroom was to my left. At that point, I was on the ground on my hands and knees. I re-racked my weapon to make sure that a live round came so that I knew that I was ready to go." "And then I peeked through the window. And at this point I found my opportunity. And I'd seen a teacher on the left struggling with the gunman on the right with the rifle." "And I knew that they were on both sides of me, and I knew that he did not know that I was there. And so at that point I swung the door out and open and I stepped in and I fired." This man deserves the Presidential Medal of FREEDOM! 🇺🇸
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) October 23, 2026
The hero dad who killed Oregon elementary school shooter Griffin John recalled hearing children “pleading for their lives” as the massacre unfolded.
Kaylub Giamanco, 36, recalled the deadly series of events at Silver Rail Elementary School after he saw John, 16, bust into the building with a shotgun last Thursday in a sit-down interview with Oregon Public Broadcasting.
Giamanco, a carpenter and dad of two girls who attend the school, was driving home to eat leftovers with his wife during his lunch break when he saw John firing a gun twice at a red pickup truck, then at a woman mowing the school’s lawn before hopping a fence to begin his deadly rampage.
“That’s when panic fled into my brain, and that’s when I opened my center console,” Giamanco told the outlet of the moment he reached for his .40 caliber handgun.
[…]
“I said, ‘I’m sorry, I have to go in. People are going to die’,” he told the dispatcher before jumping into action, quietly shuffling toward the shooter as he blasted two shots at the door.
He then rushed from a wallball court to the building on his hands and knees and heard “children pleading for their lives” as John fatally shot three children and a teacher.
“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.”
John also critically injured a 7-year-old girl in a wheelchair and a teacher.
Once he reached a bottom window that had been shot out, he crawled through it and reloaded his weapon so that he knew he was “ready to go.”
When he peeked through the window of the classroom, he saw a teacher in a physical struggle with a shooter, swung the door open, and fired at him.
“He was scrambling for his weapon,” he 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.”
This man saved lives. Period. Give him a medal.
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