A heroic father is being credited with stopping a gunman at his daughter’s Oregon elementary school after confronting the teen shooter inside the building. Kaylub Giamanco has been identified as the armed civilian who shot and killed a 16-year-old attacker on October 15, 2026, at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon.
Giamanco — a father of two students at the school — intervened after the shooter had already killed three children and a teacher inside a special needs classroom. Newly released 911 audio captures Giamanco’s warning to a dispatcher that he was about to take action.
What to know about Giamanco, below.
Kaylub Giamanco’s 911 Call Before Confronting the Shooter
Authorities released the dramatic 911 call Giamanco placed just before 1 p.m. on October 15, moments before he entered the building and stopped the shooter.
Giamanco told the dispatcher there was “someone with a gun” at his daughter’s school as he was driving home for lunch.
“I have a gun and I will shoot them right now,” Giamanco said.
The operator urged him not to get involved, but the father refused to stay back. “This is my daughter’s school!” he shouted. “I’m about to go kill this kid.”
When asked if he knew the identity of the gunman, Giamanco responded, “No I don’t f***ing know I was just driving to the school.”
He then described the shooter — who has since been identified as 16-year-old Griffin J. John — breaching the building. “They’re on the south side entering the building right now,” he said.
“Is he shooting?” the dispatcher asked. Giamanco confirmed shots had been fired. The 911 operator tried to get a more comprehensive physical description, but the call was cut off before Giamanco could answer.
Officers arrived at the school at 1:02 p.m. — four minutes after John was first spotted climbing the fence and two minutes after Giamanco placed his call. By the time police arrived, John was dead.
Kaylub Giamanco Recalled Stopping the Shooter
Giamanco opened up about the harrowing moments in an interview with Oregon Public Broadcasting.
“I just was in full panic, like, ‘No, there’s children, there’s babies in there,’” he recalled.
Giamanco said that when he spotted John climbing the school fence, “panic fled into my brain, and that’s when I opened my center console.”
“That’s when I started hearing children pleading for their lives and then I started hearing gunfire and 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.
Once inside the school, Giamanco made his way to the special education classroom, where he saw a teacher struggling with John. He fired at the shooter, allowing the teacher to escape the room.
“He was scrambling for his weapon,” Giamanco said of John. “I looked at him and I shot him two more times to make sure that he couldn’t move because I was afraid of him shooting anybody else.”
Before being stopped, John — who was armed with his mother’s shotgun — shot through locked doors and killed three children and a teacher in the special needs classroom. One other student was critically wounded and another teacher was injured.
Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz said the shooter was a previous special needs student at the school. Authorities confirmed John fired as many as 15 shots with a 12-gauge shotgun and had 44 rounds remaining at the time he was killed.
Kaylub Giamanco’s Family and Friends Describe the Hero Dad
Those closest to Giamanco say his instinct to act didn’t surprise them.
“Kaylub has always been a hero from the time we were 6 years old,” Dyland Costa, a childhood friend, told NBC News. “He’s always been the type to spring into action when needed.”
Giamanco’s mother, Kenda Freeman, recounted the phone call she received from her son after the shooting.
“He said, ‘Mom, I just shot and killed somebody.’ And I said, ‘Kaylub, tell me about it.’ And he said, ‘A man went into my daughters’ school and, um, shot kids.’ And he said, ‘And I looked at him point blank and I shot and killed him, mom,’” Freeman told CBS LA. “I told him he saved a lot of lives and he said, ‘Mom, I couldn’t save them all.’”
Freeman went on to describe how her son intervened that day. “Kaylub has a genuine heart — he loves his community. Kaylub knew something was not right, so he pulled up onto the grass, grabbed his gun and basically stalked the gunman back into the school. He crawled through a window that the gunman had shot out — he Army-crawled through the window.”
Freeman said the aftermath has been difficult for her son, who is “having a hard time with it — again, you know, the idea of not being able to save them all, right? So when he closes his eyes the things he thinks about [are] what could I have done differently? How could I have done it better?”
She added that Giamanco is “not seeking recognition” for his actions but rather “wishes to express his gratitude to the first responders, school personnel and community for the outpouring of love and support.”
The Victims of the Silver Rail Elementary Shooting
While Freeman said she is “thankful that my babies are OK,” she acknowledged that many other families were devastated.
“That’s hard to swallow, because my heart goes out to those families who didn’t get to bring their babies home,” she said.
Rhoam Summer, 5, was identified as the youngest of the victims by his family, per NBC News.
“We are broken and lost, but are surrounded by friends and family who are keeping us safe,” Rhoam’s mother, Kelik Summer, wrote on Facebook after the shooting. Officials have declined to publicly identify the remaining child victims—an 8-year-old and an 11-year-old—at the request of their families.
Megan Lambert, a 25-year-old teacher, was also killed in the attack. A 7-year-old girl and another teacher, Becky Drury, were injured in the attack.
The shooter’s mother, Shauntai Nickerson, expressed grief in the aftermath of the shooting. “I miss my boy,” she said of her son, per multiple media outlets including The New York Times and CNN. “I’m so sorry, I wish I could have done something. I’m sorry for their loss.”
This story was compiled with the help of AI tools and edited by journalists.
