Kaylub Giamanco, the Oregon father praised for stopping a school shooting, has spoken publicly for the first time about how he followed the gunman into an elementary school and shot him.
In an interview with Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) published on Friday, Giamanco recalled the events of October 15, when he confronted 16-year-old Griffin J John II. The teenager killed three children and a teacher before Giamanco fatally shot him, according to police.
Who is Kaylub Giamanco
Giamanco is a 36-year-old carpenter. He has received national attention and praise for stopping the bloodshed at Silver Rail Elementary, where his children go to school. He is from Bend. He grew up hunting birds with his grandfather.
What happened on the day of the shooting?
According to The New York Times, the day started like any other. Giamanco helped his two daughters get ready for picture day, dropped them at school and drove to a job site. He had packed lunch, but he had to go into town to buy supplies. So he called his wife and said he would come home for lunch instead. He asked her to reheat some leftover tacos.
He drove onto Brentwood Avenue, which runs right by the school. He saw a figure in black with a long gun fire twice at a red pickup truck and once into a field. Then the gunman threw the weapon over a fence by the school.
According to The Guardian, for a moment Giamanco thought it was a prank. Then he saw the man fire the gun and climb over a school fence.
“And that’s when panic flooded into my brain,” he told Oregon Public Broadcasting.
Police said Giamanco had a .40 caliber handgun legally stored in his truck. He took it out, put the magazine in and drove into the school parking lot. The gunman, armed with a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun, was walking along the outside of the school. Giamanco asked Siri to call 911.
“I said, ‘I’m sorry, I have to go in. People are going to die,’” Giamanco told Oregon Public Broadcasting.
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How Giamanco shot the gunman
Giamanco hopped over a fence and crept behind the attacker. He heard the attacker fire into the side doors of the school and blast his way in. Giamanco followed quietly without the teenager seeing him. At one point he crawled on his hands and knees when he heard “children pleading for their lives”.
“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 told OPB.
He crawled in through a window that had been shot out. He looked into a special education classroom and saw the attacker, later identified as Griffin J John II, 16, a former special education student at the school. John was wrestling with a teacher.
Police said John had already killed three children, aged 5, 8 and 11, and a 25-year-old teacher, Megan Lambert, in the classroom. He had also wounded a 7-year-old girl and a 54-year-old teacher. Police said another teacher threw her cellphone at John and started wrestling with him, and called this a heroic confrontation that stopped more bloodshed.
“At that point, I swung the door out and open, and I stepped in, and I fired,” Giamanco said. The teacher and the gunman fell to the floor. He said the teacher then ran out, fearing he was another attacker.
Giamanco saw John scrambling for his shotgun and shot him two more times, killing him. Giamanco said he “was afraid of him shooting anybody else”. A heavily armed police officer arrived moments later.
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What Giamanco says now
Giamanco told OPB that he lies awake at night thinking about what he saw and about the teenage attacker. He wonders if he could have done more.
“I want to apologize for not saving their babies,” Giamanco told the outlet. “The gratitude for saving people’s children is awesome, but there were ones that I didn’t save.”
He wants to meet the victims’ families and “just cry with them and hold them.”
According to The New York Times, President Trump, Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek and the Bend police have all praised him. They said he helped prevent even more deaths.