The Oregon father, hailed as a hero for stopping a school shooting last week, spoke for the first time about the incident, describing his experience and how he told a 911 operator: “I have to go.” People are going to die. »
Kaylub Giamanco, a 36-year-old carpenter, received national attention and praise for stopping the bloodshed at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon, where his children go to school.
He shot and killed Griffin J John II, a 16-year-old former student at the school, who broke in and shot six people, killing Megan Lambert, a 25-year-old teacher, and three children, including five-year-old Rhoam Summer.
In an interview with Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB), the first since the October 15 shooting, he recounted that day. He told reporters he was only in the area because he decided to go home and have lunch with his wife rather than the meal he brought to work that day.
For a moment, Giamanco, who lives near the school, thought it was a prank when he saw a man in black armed with a rifle heading toward Silver Rail, he said. Then he saw the man fire his gun and climb a school fence. Giamanco pulled a .40-caliber handgun from his center console and walked toward the school parking lot, calling 911, before jumping over a fence to pursue the shooter.
He quietly followed Griffin without the teen seeing him, at one point crawling on his hands and knees when he heard “children pleading for their lives.”
“I just started crawling faster and faster and I thought that’s probably the last thing I’m going to do,” he told OPB.
Giamanco crawled through a broken window and headed toward the special education classroom Griffin had entered, where a teacher was fighting with the shooter. He entered the classroom and fired his gun. Griffin fell and was reaching for his gun before Giamanco, who said he was “scared he was going to shoot someone else,” shot him twice.
He told OPB he lay awake at night thinking about what he saw that day and the teenage attacker, and wondered 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 overwhelming, but there were some I didn’t save.”
Giamanco said he wants to see safer schools with school resource officers at every site and would like to raise money to support school safety efforts.
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