Kaylub Giamanco says he was driving past the school his daughters attend when he encountered a nightmare and moved toward it. In an appearance on CBS Mornings, he described entering Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, OR, with his gun and confronting an armed attacker. His account of the Bend school shooting includes a teacher fighting the gunman, a deadly confrontation and confusion after the threat ended. It also includes something less easily captured by the word hero: the screams he says he still hears. Giamanco says he has not been able to return to his work as a carpenter.
WLT Report identified the gunman as 16-year-old Griffin J. John II. Giamanco said the victims included children ages 5, 8 and 11. CBS News reported that a teacher was also among those killed; another teacher and a 7-year-old were injured. Giamanco’s two daughters attend Silver Rail, giving him a deeply personal connection to the building he entered. But his interview was not simply a father’s account of defending his children’s school. It was also an account of arriving amid lethal violence and living afterward with the knowledge that he could not save everyone.
Inside the Bend School Shooting Confrontation
Giamanco said he called 911 and told the dispatcher he was following the shooter into the building. He then crawled inside and looked through a classroom window, where he saw a teacher struggling with the gunman. According to police, the unarmed teacher had thrown her cellphone at the attacker and tackled him. That resistance is central to Giamanco’s description of what happened next. He said it gave him “the split second of having two people side-by-side.” His account credits her intervention with creating the opening that allowed him to enter the room.
“I knew that he wasn’t paying attention to me, so it gave me the opportunity to swing the door open and step in and complete my mission, so to speak,” Giamanco said. After he fired the first shot, he said, the gunman remained alive and was “struggling with his weapon” and “trying to regain control.” Giamanco also said the attacker tried to speak, but he did not listen. He quoted himself saying, “F— you,” before firing again. What the gunman intended to say is unknown, and Giamanco did not claim otherwise. The critical detail in his account is his statement that the attacker was still attempting to control the weapon.
A Teacher’s Courage, Then a Frightening Misunderstanding
The teacher’s actions deserve attention alongside the armed intervention. According to police, she confronted a gunman without a firearm, using her cellphone before physically tackling him. Giamanco described encountering that struggle, not an empty classroom or an attacker standing alone. Her resistance and his intervention were connected in his telling of the confrontation. There is no way to establish from that account exactly how many additional people might otherwise have been harmed. There is, however, a clear basis for recognizing the extraordinary danger both faced while trying to stop an attack inside an elementary school.
After confirming that the gunman was dead, Giamanco said he dropped his weapon and went to check on the teacher. She “ran away from” him, he recalled. He said that was not “the greatest feeling,” but he understood that she believed he might be another active shooter. That moment captures the terrifying uncertainty inside the building even after the confrontation ended. Giamanco knew why he had entered the classroom, but the teacher could not be expected to know his intentions immediately. Her response was not a judgment on his actions; by his own explanation, she was afraid he represented another threat.
When police arrived, Giamanco said he raised his hands and asked for help. He then asked whether he could pick up his weapon and go to his car to call his loved ones. His account describes asking permission, not simply retrieving the gun and walking away. That distinction matters in a scene where another person had already mistaken him for a possible attacker. It also marks the shift from confronting the gunman to dealing with the aftermath. The immediate danger had ended, but those inside still had to understand who was present and what had happened.
The Burden Behind the Hero Label
Giamanco described a sharp difference between his state of mind during the attack and what followed. “During the situation I was not scared. Like I say, it was the fight mode that clicked in, and I completed my mission,” he said. “It wasn’t until I called my wife and my mother that everything kind of flooded in on me.” He now describes mixed feelings about being called a hero. He says he still hears the screams of children he could not reach in time. His inability to return to carpentry underscores that the consequences did not end when he left the school.
Recognizing his courage does not require turning this tragedy into a victory story. Children and a teacher were killed, others were injured, and the people who intervened were left carrying memories of the attack. Giamanco’s account gives the teacher’s resistance an important place in the sequence, while his own description shows the emotional cost of stepping into that classroom. Both deserve recognition without unsupported claims about precisely what might have happened otherwise. The most meaningful part of his interview is not the final insult he directed at the gunman. It is the account of people acting under terrible pressure, followed by grief that an act of courage could not erase.
Source: WLT Report