In an exclusive conversation with OPB, Kaylub Giamanco, the man who shot and killed the teenage attacker responsible for the deadly shooting at Silver Rail Elementary School, recounts what happened and explains what he hopes others will understand about his experience.
For Kaylub Giamanco, that Thursday began like countless other mornings. He woke up, helped prepare his children for school, made breakfast with his family and packed their lunches. Because Oct. 15 was picture day at Silver Rail Elementary, he and his wife devoted a little more time than usual to getting their two daughters dressed and ready.
After taking the girls to school, the 36-year-old carpenter drove toward a construction project northeast of Bend. Although he had brought lunch in his truck, he changed his plans that afternoon and decided to return home to share leftover tacos with his wife. He briefly considered stopping to complete a few errands but ultimately continued toward home. About four blocks from his house, he turned onto Brentwood Avenue, which borders the southern side of Silver Rail Elementary.
During his exclusive interview with OPB, Giamanco reflected on the seemingly ordinary choices that placed him at that location at precisely 12:58 p.m., just as a 16-year-old armed with a shotgun approached the school attended by his daughters. There was the lunch he had packed but left untouched, the masonry business he decided not to visit, the bolts he intended to purchase but never did, and a firearm that, as he described it, had been “collecting dust” inside his truck’s center console.
As he drove past the school, Giamanco noticed an armed individual and followed him onto school property. He ultimately shot and killed the teenager after the attacker discharged shotgun rounds inside a special education classroom. Three children, aged 5, 8 and 11, and a 25-year-old teacher lost their lives, while two additional people sustained serious injuries. Law enforcement officials have credited Giamanco with preventing further deaths at the elementary school, which serves more than 400 students.
Yet Giamanco believes his actions that afternoon were shaped by experiences stretching back many years. As the eldest of seven siblings, he helped his single mother care for the family. He once used an improvised tourniquet to save his brother following a motorcycle accident. He also received informal military-style training from veterans of the Iraq War. Looking back, he considers these experiences part of the preparation that enabled him to respond as he did.
“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,” he said. “I feel like if I’m going to have a voice, then I’ll be damned if I’m not going to use it to change this world, to make it a better place.”
“I’m sorry. I have to go in. People are going to die.”
Moments after turning onto Brentwood Avenue on Oct. 15, Giamanco spotted what he described as a “man in black” carrying a long firearm. Initially, he wondered whether the individual was playing a prank or holding a BB gun. That uncertainty disappeared when he witnessed the person fire twice toward a red pickup truck, then turn toward the school property and shoot at a woman who was mowing the lawn.
Giamanco recalled watching the armed teenager throw his weapon over the school’s fence before climbing across. It was at that moment, he explained, that “that’s when panic fled into my brain, and that’s when I opened my center console.”
For an instant, his “heart dropped” as he questioned whether the .40-caliber handgun he seldom used was still inside the vehicle. Finding it there, he retrieved its magazine from another compartment and entered the school parking lot while keeping the gunman in sight as the teenager crossed the grounds.
“I just was in full panic, like, ‘No, there’s children, there’s babies in there.’ I told my Siri to call 911,” he recalled. Although the emergency dispatcher attempted to obtain additional information, Giamanco did not remain on the line to respond.
“I said, ‘I’m sorry, I have to go in. People are going to die.’”
According to Giamanco, he climbed over the fence while the gunman moved along the opposite side of a wallball court. He followed discreetly, keeping himself concealed as the teenager approached the glass double doors at a side entrance to the building.
“I heard him fire two shots into the doors,” Giamanco recalled.
He then moved quickly from the court toward the school building, lowering himself to the ground and advancing on his hands and knees beneath the windows.
“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 continued crawling until he encountered a shattered lower window, through which he entered the building. Remaining close to the floor, he advanced to the special education classroom on his left. Before proceeding, he cycled his handgun again to confirm that it was ready, explaining that he wanted a live round to come out “so that I knew that I was ready to go.”
Looking through the classroom window, Giamanco saw a teacher physically struggling with the armed teenager. Both individuals were positioned sideways relative to where he stood.
“I knew that he did not know that I was there,” Giamanco explained.
He opened the classroom door and entered.
“And I fired.”
Both the gunman and the teacher fell to the ground. The teacher then managed to stand and ran from the room. Giamanco believed she might have mistaken him for another attacker and fled in fear. He turned his attention to the teenager on the floor.
“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.”
By that point, police sirens were audible outside. Giamanco left the classroom to search for the teacher who had escaped. When the first responding officer arrived wearing body armor and carrying a rifle, Giamanco placed his handgun on the floor and raised his hands. Only a few minutes had elapsed since he contacted emergency services from outside the building.
As additional officers and emergency personnel arrived, Giamanco returned to his pickup truck. He removed the ammunition from his handgun, placed the weapon on the vehicle’s floor and reached for his phone.
“I called my wife to tell her that I’m not coming home for tacos,” he recalled. He instructed her to come to the school immediately, explaining that he had just killed someone who had been shooting children and teachers.
His next call was to his mother.
“She was just like, ‘Okay, baby, calm down. You did the right thing. You’re a hero. You saved lives.’ And I was just like, ‘I didn’t save everybody. I didn’t get them all.’”
“I want to apologize for not saving their babies”
The first public indication of Giamanco’s involvement emerged through emergency radio communications, where a dispatcher reported that the “shooter has been neutralized, possibly shot by a father at the school.”
Within 24 hours, Giamanco’s identity had become widely known.
In the hours immediately following the tragedy, Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz addressed reporters and acknowledged the actions of both Giamanco and the teacher who had confronted the armed teenager. “I don’t think we can underestimate or underappreciate that courage,” Krantz said.
During the following week, Giamanco and his relatives faced persistent attention from journalists, including repeated telephone calls and visits to their home. Political advocacy organizations also contacted him, seeking opportunities for him to share his experience in support of their causes.
Incidents in which armed civilians intervene to stop mass shootings are extremely uncommon. Among approximately 600 mass shooting cases recorded across the United States since 2000, civilian gun owners have stopped attackers only a few dozen times. Researchers specializing in mass shootings told OPB they did not know whether any comparable incidents had occurred at schools.
President Donald Trump praised Giamanco, describing him as “a great hero that went in and did the business.”
The incident has unexpectedly placed Giamanco at the center of national attention and discussions surrounding firearms legislation and public safety. Meanwhile, Deschutes County officials reported that applications for concealed handgun permits had increased during the week following the shooting.
Giamanco identifies politically as an independent and told OPB that he has no interest in participating in partisan accusations or assigning political blame.
“I teach my children that we love, we accept everybody,” he explained. “I don’t want to make this a political situation.”
Instead, he has been struggling to cope with the emotional consequences of what he witnessed. Sleep has become particularly difficult, and he often remains awake long after the rest of his family has gone to bed.
“I relive, I see faces, I hear voices, I hear screams.”
His thoughts frequently return to the teenager whose life he ended.
“Sometimes there’s a child out there that didn’t have the love that they deserved,” Giamanco reflected. “But I do want to believe that if he had more love in his life and better parenting, that this could have been prevented.”
He repeatedly revisits the sequence of events, questioning whether reaching the attacker earlier might have prevented additional deaths.
“It was split second decisions while gunfire was going off, while children were losing their lives,” he said.
Giamanco also remains deeply grateful to the teacher who physically confronted the shooter. He believes her intervention created the opportunity for him to fire without being killed himself. Despite the significance of her actions, he has not yet learned her name.
“I would love to give her a hug because that’s a real true hero,” he said.
He also thinks constantly about the families who lost loved ones in the attack. At the time of the interview, he had not spoken directly with any of them.
“I want to apologize for not saving their babies,” he said, struggling to contain his emotions. “The gratitude for saving people’s children is awesome, but there were ones that I didn’t save.”
“Meant to be here”
Giamanco is fully aware that others now regard him as a hero. Although accepting that description has been difficult, he said he is gradually becoming more comfortable with it.
“I want to be a hero in this world,” he explained. “It feels like I was meant to be here and do this.”
A lifelong resident of Bend, Giamanco describes himself as an enthusiastic science-fiction fan who enjoys riding all-terrain vehicles and motocross motorcycles with his brothers and sisters. His introduction to firearms came at age 7, when his grandfather purchased a shotgun for him and took him bird hunting in the Ochoco Mountains. Giamanco recalled that he and his grandfather also taught young people about responsible firearm handling, archery and basic wilderness survival skills.
He intends to provide his own daughters with instruction in the safe use of firearms.
“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.
When Giamanco was 15, his father left the family home.
“It was chaotic,” he recalled. “We did not grow up wealthy, but my mother did everything she could to raise seven children, mostly on her own.”
Being the oldest child meant Giamanco increasingly recognized that his younger siblings viewed him as someone they could follow and learn from.
“I was young at the time. I wasn’t a father,” he said, remembering how people reminded him of his responsibilities: “These kids are looking up to you. You lead by example. They watch everything you do.”
Around the age of 18, Giamanco largely gave up hunting for an extended period. He later attended Central Oregon Community College to study geography before entering a carpentry apprenticeship arranged through a family acquaintance.
His interest in firearms returned years afterward while he was working on the construction of a restaurant in Redmond. According to Giamanco, the client involved in that project helped reconnect him with firearms and shooting.
“He was highly decorated. He’s had multiple tours in Iraq and he is an amazing gentleman,” Giamanco recalled. “His platoon would come out to Bend and I built targets and walls for them.”
Those military veterans subsequently offered him practical instruction involving weapons and military drills. The training encouraged him to begin owning firearms again and became an experience he now considers crucial to his survival during the school attack.
“I felt like if I didn’t have that training, I probably wouldn’t be alive today,” he told OPB.
“I can see it in her eyes”
Giamanco said his conversation with OPB marked the first time he had fully described the events at Silver Rail Elementary, even though he had not yet shared all the details with his own family. He explained that he decided to speak publicly because he felt compelled to use the attention surrounding him for a meaningful purpose. Whether he will eventually resume his carpentry career remains uncertain.
“I feel like I was put on this earth to do something more than just fix houses,” he said.
Since the shooting, he has begun considering a project that would combine his passion for motocross with fundraising for school security. He envisions organizing a motocross race and directing all proceeds toward safety improvements at educational institutions. Potential investments could include bullet-resistant glass for doors, stronger locking systems and additional research into measures that would help children feel protected in their classrooms. He also supports placing school resource officers in every school.
“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?”
For his own daughters, however, returning to the classroom is not something he expects to happen soon.
Following the attack, the family temporarily relocated, initially staying in a hotel before moving into a vacation rental. Their house overlooks the school, making it particularly difficult to escape reminders of the tragedy. They have tried to find comfort and distraction through simple activities together, including preparing homemade chowder and playing board games.
“My 5-year-old probably a hundred times a day comes up to me and just hugs me and says, ‘I love you, Daddy.’ And I hug her, I pick her up, and squeeze her as hard as I can. I say, ‘I love you too. You’re my world.’”
His older daughter, who is 10, has reacted more quietly. Giamanco said she understands the seriousness of what occurred but tends to keep her emotions to herself.
“She has just the biggest heart in the world and I can tell, I can see it in her eyes.”
He continues reassuring her that she is loved and that he will always do everything possible to keep her safe, regardless of the circumstances.
“That’s our job as parents to be here for children, to spend time with them, to show them our love and compassion,” Giamanco said, “So that they know that they have people in this world standing behind them.”
Original reporting by Emily Cureton Cook and Jen Baires. Editorial contributions by Gillian Flaccus and Tony Schick; digital production by Frankie Benitez; photography and video by Julia Reihs and Saskia Hatvany; visual editing by Kristyna Wentz-Graff. The audio adaptation was written and produced by Tiffany Camhi and edited by Michelle Wiley.