BEND, ORE.
A day after a teenager opened fire inside a special education classroom at Silver Rail Elementary School, Bend police on Friday described two acts of intervention that, in the chief’s assessment, kept a terrible afternoon from becoming a worse one. According to both USA TODAY and the New York Post, Police Chief Mike Krantz told reporters at a Friday press conference that a teacher inside the classroom threw her cellphone at the shooter, then tackled him and wrestled with him over his firearm — and that a parent who followed the attacker into the school then shot him dead.
This is a follow-up to Thursday’s attack, which we covered in our initial report on the Silver Rail Elementary shooting. Friday’s briefing added the first detailed official account of what happened inside the classroom, formally identified the suspect, and confirmed the names of two of the four people killed. We are presenting those details as police stated them, attributed to the chief through the outlets that covered the briefing, and without embellishment — the facts are stark enough on their own.
What Police Say Happened Inside the Classroom
USA TODAY reported that Krantz described the teacher’s actions as heroic: she threw her phone at the 16-year-old suspect and then tackled him, fighting to take his firearm away. The New York Post, covering the same press conference, reported the same sequence — the teacher hurled her cellphone at the gunman and tackled him to the ground inside the special education classroom, wrestling for the weapon. Krantz praised the teacher’s actions, and the Post reported his assessment that she was not injured and almost certainly helped prevent more bloodshed.
While the teacher was struggling with the attacker, police said, Kaylub Giamanco — a 36-year-old parent at the school, identified by family members to multiple news outlets, according to USA TODAY — came into the classroom carrying his own pistol and fatally shot the suspect. The Post reported that Giamanco entered with a .40-caliber pistol and fired after seeing the teacher wrestling with the gunman. Police said the shooter was dead when officers arrived, which USA TODAY reported was within minutes of the first emergency calls.
The Suspect and the Weapon
On Friday, Krantz identified the shooter as Griffin J. John II, 16, according to USA TODAY. Police said John had previously been a special education student at Silver Rail Elementary, and that he appears to have traveled to the school on foot, climbed a fence, and shot his way through a door into a classroom near the entrance. The Post reported that police said he fired at least 15 shots inside the classroom with a Maverick 88, a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun. USA TODAY reported that officers found that shotgun near the suspect along with a backpack, and that the chief said roughly 44 rounds of ammunition remained on his person or in the backpack. Federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were assisting with tracing the firearm, a bureau spokesperson told USA TODAY.
USA TODAY also reported, from the chief’s account, that before entering the school the suspect fired at a red pickup truck whose driver had confronted him near the fence, striking the truck at least three times, and that the driver’s call was the first 911 call of the incident, logged just before 1 p.m. on Thursday. Police began arriving within roughly two minutes, according to the timeline USA TODAY reported from the briefing.
The Victims, and the Injured
Four people were killed on Thursday. Krantz confirmed Friday, according to both outlets, that the dead were three students, ages 5, 8 and 11, and a teacher, Megan Lambert, 25. Police released the name of the 5-year-old, Rhoam Summer, at his family’s request; the names of the other two children were withheld at their families’ request, USA TODAY reported. A 7-year-old child and another teacher were injured and were being treated at hospitals. USA TODAY reported that family members identified the injured educational assistant as Rebecca Drury and said through a family friend that her injuries were serious but not life-threatening, and that she was recovering after surgery. Our separate coverage of the vigil and the order to lower flags to half-staff describes how Bend spent Friday mourning.
What Police Still Do Not Know
Krantz was direct on Friday about the limits of what investigators can say. USA TODAY reported that the chief declined to identify a motive, saying the question of why the attack happened is the same one investigators themselves are urgently asking, and that determining it will take substantial investigative time — and may never be fully answered. That restraint matters. In the first days after an attack like this, speculation rushes in to fill every gap; the chief’s position, as reported, is that the investigation is active and the answer is not yet there.
What is there, on the record from two independent national outlets covering the same briefing, is a clear account of two people who intervened. A teacher with nothing but a phone in her hand chose to close distance with an armed teenager rather than run from him, and a parent who heard the attack unfolding followed it into the building. Police credit both with limiting the toll. The toll was still four lives, three of them children, in a classroom built for the students who need the most care. That is the part of this story no heroism framing should be allowed to soften: Bend is burying a teacher and three students, and two more people are in hospitals. The investigation continues, and we will update our coverage as police release verified information; see also Friday’s nightly news wrap-up and the latest from the news desk.
