A series of innocuous choices made by an Oregon father led him to an elementary school where he killed a mass shooter in what the father thought would be his last act on earth.
Police praised his quick thinking and decisive actions Bend carpenter Kaylub Giamanco confronted 16-year-old Griffin J. John II and stopped the massacre by the teenage gunman.
On October 15, a gunman had already killed a teacher and three young children at Silver Rail Elementary School. If the 36-year-old Giamanco had not randomly appeared at the crime scene, he might have continued the attack.
In an emotional and harrowing interview published Friday by Oregon Public Broadcasting, Giamanco recalled that fateful day.
“I always wanted to change the world, but I felt so small. I was just a carpenter from Bend, Oregon. I was nothing but my friends and family,” he told OPB. “I feel like if I’m going to have a voice, then I’m damned if I don’t use it to change the world and make it a better place.”
Giamanco showed up in the neighborhood near Silver Tracks Thursday after Carpenter made a series of seemingly benign decisions about lunch.
Giamanco packed a lunch snack but changed his mind about eating it, choosing instead to drive home and eat the remaining tacos with his wife, he said.
On the way home, Giamanco briefly considered going to a masonry store to buy some bolts he needed, but instead opted to go home again and buy tortillas.
Those choices, he recalled, 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 shooting at a motorist and a woman who was mowing the school lawn.
Giamanco, who had a .40-caliber handgun in the console of his truck, saw the killer throw the weapon over the school fence and then crawl over.
The father understood what was happening. “That’s when panic filled my brain, and that’s when I opened the center console.”
Giamanco, who has two daughters, ages 5 and 10, who attend Silver Rail, called 911 but was unable to answer all of the dispatcher’s questions.
“I said, ‘Sorry, I have to go in. People are going to die,'” Giamanco said.
Bend, Oregon, Police Chief Mike Krantz explains how a suspected shooter entered Silver Rail Elementary School and opened fire in a classroom, and how a citizen shot and killed the suspect.
Giamanco kept a low profile as he approached the academic building, and blood could be heard coming from his knees.
“That’s when I started hearing kids begging for mercy, and then I started hearing gunfire, and I started crawling faster and faster, and I told myself, ‘This is probably the last thing I’m going to do,'” he said.
Giamanco climbed in through a shot-out window and reached the special education classroom, re-racking his gun and preparing for a deadly confrontation.
He encountered the gunman and a teacher fighting over the killer’s gun.
“I knew he didn’t know I was there,” Giamanco said. “Then I shot.”
He said the teacher may have thought Giamanco was the second attacker and fled. But the gunman was still alive and reached for his gun.
“He was fighting for his weapon,” Giamanco said. “I looked at him and shot him two more times to make sure he couldn’t move because I was afraid he was going to shoot someone else.”
Police arrived shortly after and Giamanco begged them to let him call relatives.
“I called my wife and told her I wasn’t coming home to eat tacos,” he said.
Then he called his mother.
“She just said, ‘Okay, baby, calm down. You did the right thing. You’re a hero. You saved lives.’ I was like, ‘I didn’t save them all. I didn’t get them all.’
Law enforcement officials generally praised Giamanco’s quick actions. “I don’t think we can underestimate or underestimate that kind of courage,” Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz said of Giamanco and the teacher who fought his killer in the hours after the shooting.
Giamanco said that since the mass shooting, he has had trouble sleeping and forgetting that horrific day.
“I relived the past, I saw faces, I heard voices, I heard screams,” he said.
Carpenter has yet to meet the parents of the three murdered children. Giamanco said he wanted to tell them he was sorry for not taking more action.
“I want to apologize for not saving their children,” Giamanco said, his voice choked with emotion. “The gratitude for saving people’s children is amazing, but there were some kids I didn’t save.”
Residents of Bend, Oregon, gathered Thursday night for a candlelight vigil to honor the victims of the tragic Silver Tracks Elementary School shooting.