“Children are taken from school to church and then handed over to parents from youngest to oldest,” Johnston said. “My son is in fifth grade and is the last class to get out of school.”
The shooting occurred around 1 p.m. PT when a suspected teenage gunman entered the school armed with a long gun and opened fire through a locked door.
A teacher and three children aged 5, 8 and 11 were killed. Two other people, a 7-year-old child and another teacher, were seriously injured.
The names of the victims and injured have not yet been released.
The suspect is said to be a 16-year-old Bend resident. Authorities said he was shot and killed by a Good Samaritan who chased him.
Justin Penfield said he was with his wife when they received the notice from the school. He said a friend who was already at the school told them to get to the building as quickly as possible.
Penfield recalled seeing a “heavy police presence” and finding his son’s kindergarten class already outside. Penfield said that as he was walking his son back to his car, he saw a man standing next to a pickup truck with “seven or eight bullet holes in it.”
According to Penfield, the man told him that as he was driving back from lunch, he saw someone throw what looked like a shotgun over a fence and then jump over the fence into the school’s playground.
Penfield recalled his conversation with the man, who said he yelled and asked what the man was doing because he thought it was weird.
According to Penfield, the man told him the gunman turned around and opened fire on his truck. Penfield said the man told him he sped off and called 911.
Bend Mayor Melanie Kebler said at a vigil Thursday night that the shooting was a dark day for the city and that “words simply cannot describe the loss we have suffered.”