Hero father who killed Silver Rail mass shooter speaks out for first time: ‘I’m just a carpenter from Bend, Oregon’

Kaylub Giamanco, 36, spoke to Oregon Public Broadcasting (OBP) about the fateful day, which began just as any other: with him dropping off his little girls at school. Despite packing a lunch at his carpentry job, he decided to go home to have lunch with his wife, which took him past the school just as the incident had started.

Giamanco, from Bend, Oregon, recounted that as he was driving past the school, he saw the shooter, identified as Griffin J. John II, firing at a car and then at someone on a lawnmower at the school. John took the lives of three children aged 5, 8, and 11, as well as teacher Megan Lambert, 25. Giamanco saw the shooter throw the gun over the fence of the school and told reporters, “That’s when panic fled into my brain, and that’s when I opened my center console."

He grabbed his loaded .40 caliber handgun and drove onto the school grounds while he watched the shooter approach the building. “I just was in full panic, like, ‘No, there’s children, there’s babies in there.’ I told my Siri to call 911,” he said. Although the dispatcher was asking him a ton of questions, he did not stay on the call long and said, "I’m sorry, I have to go in. People are going to die."

Giamanco hopped the fence with his firearm and pursued the shooter, making sure to stay out of sight. After John shot past two doors, he recounted, “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 reached a special education room, where he peeked through the window and saw that the shooter was struggling with a teacher who had grabbed for the gun. Retelling the story, he said he swung the door open and fired a shot, with the teacher giving him the chance to do so.

“He was scrambling for his weapon,” Giamanco said. “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.”

He told reporters that the screams of the children that he was not able to save still haunt him. “I relive, I see faces, I hear voices, I hear screams," he said. He also thinks about the shooter. “Sometimes there’s a child out there that didn’t have the love that they deserved,” Giamanco said. “But I do want to believe that if he had more love in his life and better parenting, that this could have been prevented.”

During the interview, Giamanco also expressed gratitude for the teacher who put herself in harm's way to stop the shooter. He still does not know her name. “I would love to give her a hug because that’s a real true hero."

After the shooting, he has struggled to go back to being a carpenter. He and his family have been staying in a hotel and then a vacation rental since they can see the school from their house. They have tried to get their minds off the shooting. He also said that he might delve into fundraising for more security at schools. “I feel like I was put on this earth to do something more than just fix houses."

One of the ideas that he has mulled through is running a motocross race that would donate all proceeds to improving school safety, with better locks and bulletproof glass.

“We have AI. We are in a world of technology right now. We have smart homes. We have smart cars. Why can’t we have smart schools?”

“I’ve always wanted to change the world, but I’ve felt small. I’m just a carpenter from Bend, Oregon. I was a nobody other than to my friends and family,” Giamanco added. “I feel like if I’m going to have a voice, then I’ll be d*mned if I’m not going to use it to change this world, to make it a better place.”

He plans on teaching his daughters how to use guns. “It’s more dangerous to be afraid of a gun than it is to just be comfortable with one and know that they’re there to either provide you food or to provide you protection,” he said during the interview.