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Hero Dad Who Took Down School Shooter Reveals What He Heard Before Pulling The Trigger
Confirmed
In Short: After neutralizing the shooter, Giamanco hugged his daughter, saying, 'I hug her, I pick her up.
Kaylub Giamanco, a 36-year-old carpenter and father of two girls who attend Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon, detailed his actions during the October 15 school shooting in an interview with Oregon Public Broadcasting.
Giamanco said he abandoned a 911 call to confront the gunman because he feared children would die before police arrived. He described himself as an independent and emphasized that he did not want to make the situation political.
Giamanco recalled the moment he decided to act: 'I’m sorry, I have to go in. People are going to die.' He saw a 'man in black' holding a long gun near the school grounds and immediately took action.
After neutralizing the shooter, Giamanco hugged his daughter, saying, 'I hug her, I pick her up, and squeeze her as hard as I can.'
The incident occurred when the suspect, a 16-year-old boy from Bend, forced his way into the school on Thursday afternoon by shooting through locked doors with a long gun. Police arrived minutes later to find the deceased shooter and four victims — three children, ages 5, 8, and 11, and a 25-year-old teacher — inside the school.
Giamanco’s actions were praised by community members and officials. Assistant Police Chief Tyrone Davis of Seattle told the city council's public safety committee that although officers took the shooter into custody in less than half a minute, official information to the public was delayed for hours due to directives from the mayor's office.
Giamanco’s mother, Freeman, described him as 'a good person, in general' and said, 'Kaylub has a genuine heart and he loves his community and his family and his children.'
What's confirmed
- “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 said.
- “I just was in full panic, like, ‘No, there’s children, there’s babies in there,’” he said.
- The victims were all pupils at the school, aged 14 to 17, said Albert Palencia, mayor of Banga town in South Cotabato, where the shooting took place.
- Three pupils were killed in a school shooting on the southern Philippines island of Mindanao on Friday, including the 16-year-old suspected gunman who turned the weapon on himself.
- Giamanco told OPB that he saw a “man in black” holding a long gun near the school grounds.
- The mass shooting at a Bend, Oregon, elementary school on Thursday that left three children and one teacher dead took place inside a special needs classroom, authorities said at a news conference, identifying some of the victims and the suspected shooter.
- Trump said he was briefed on shooting at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, where three children and a teacher were killed.
- BOTELHO | The National News Desk WASHINGTON (TNND) — President Donald Trump praised the Good Samaritan who shot and killed an Oregon elementary school shooter, saying the intervention likely saved lives.
What's still developing
- “I’ve always wanted to change the world, but I’ve felt small,” he said.
- “The suspect supposedly sat beside his friends and told them to go home ‘because after lunch, I will be executing my plan’. His friends laughed because the shooter was a known joker,” Palencia told Reuters.
- In June, at least three students were killed and about 20 others injured in an attack at a public high school in Tacloban, where two classmates opened fire on campus.
- “That’s when panic fled into my brain, and that’s when I opened my center console,” he said.
- “Looks like the shooter has been neutralized – possibly shot by a father at the school,” emergency dispatchers said to responding officers, according to the New York Post.
- Emergency services began receiving calls for help around 12:59pm local time (19:59 GMT), with “dozens” of additional calls in the ensuing minutes.