An Oregon carpenter who crawled through a shattered classroom window to gun down a school shooter and stop a massacre is now left alone with the horror of what he witnessed — and what he couldn't prevent.
Kaylub Giamanco, 36, killed 16-year-old Griffin J. John II inside Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend on Oct. 15 after the teen had already murdered a teacher and three young children and critically injured a 7-year-old girl in a wheelchair and another teacher. Giamanco's only weapon was a .40 caliber handgun he kept in his truck console. His only backup was his own resolve.
In an interview with Oregon Public Broadcasting, Giamanco said he was driving home for leftover tacos during his lunch break when he spotted a "man in black" firing at a pickup truck and a woman mowing the school lawn. His two daughters, 5 and 10, attend Silver Rail.
"That's when panic filled into my brain, and that's when I opened my center console," he said.
He told Siri to call 911 but couldn't stay on the line. "I said, 'I'm sorry, I have to go in. People are going to die.'"
He army-crawled toward the building as children screamed inside. "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 crawled through a shot-out window, racked his firearm, and found the shooter grappling with a teacher over the gun. "I knew that he did not know that I was there. And I fired." The teacher fled — possibly mistaking Giamanco for a second shooter. The killer was still reaching for his weapon. "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."
When police arrived, Giamanco asked to call his family. "I called my wife to tell her that I'm not coming home for tacos." Then he called his mother, who told him he was a hero. His response: "I didn't save everybody."
The New York Post noted that authorities are investigating John's connections to "nihilist violent extremist" groups — details NBC's outlets didn't touch. The Post also reported on a critically injured teacher who survived by pretending to be dead. Both are facts that matter to understanding what Giamanco walked into.
All three outlets covered Giamanco's heroism in detail. None lingered on the obvious: an armed citizen — not a police response, not a lockdown protocol, not a gun-free zone sign — was the only thing standing between a killer and more dead children. Giamanco's .40 caliber, kept legally in his truck, ended the slaughter. Now he sits with the weight of those he couldn't reach.
A carpenter from Bend heard children begging for their lives and went in anyway. The culture that can't name evil left him to carry the cost alone.
