BEND, Ore. — Two heroes — a teacher who wrestled a teen shooter and an alert father who fatally shot the boy — likely prevented more deaths in the elementary school shooting Thursday that took four lives, Bend police said Friday.
Bend Police Chief Michael Krantz said Friday that a former special needs student at the school, Griffin J. John II, 16, shot his way through security doors with a pump-action shotgun at Silver Rail Elementary School shortly before 1 p.m. on Thursday. He then entered a special-education classroom and killed three children and a teacher while injuring two others, according to Krantz.
A female teacher tackled him. While the two were grappling, the father of two students at the school, who minutes earlier had seen the teenager shoot at a pickup truck outside the campus and then climb a fence to get in, approached the pair with his own gun and killed the shooter.
Krantz said that the “quick thinking” dad and the teacher “willing to stand for her children” saved lives.
“I don’t think you can underestimate or under appreciate that courage,” he said. “We all recognize that that is true heroism.”
Police identified two of the four victims by name Friday — a teacher Meghan Lambert, 25, and a 5-year-old student, Rhoam Summer.
“Today has been the worst day of my life,” said Kelik Summer, his father, in a Facebook post. “We are broken and lost, but are surrounded by friends and family who are keeping us safe.”
Silver Rail was Lambert’s first job as a teacher, though she had been a substitute teacher there for many years before, her family said in a statement read by police Friday.
“This was her dream job,” the statement said. “Meghan was compassionate and had a huge heart. She always fought for the underdog and those with special needs. She was an incredible sister, daughter, niece, and granddaughter. Her friends became her family.”
Becky Drury, a 54-year-old teacher, was injured in the shooting, according to a family friend, Zack Hall. He said Drury suffered serious, but not life-threatening injuries in the shooting. In a statement, Drury’s husband, Will Drury, said he was focused on his wife and supporting his family “through an unimaginably difficult time.”
The shooter had been a special-education student at the school in 2020, when he was 10, according to an interview with his mother, Shauntai Nickerson, in a local news article at the time. (Two people familiar with the investigation confirmed to The Post that Nickerson was the mother of the gunman. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details of the case that have not been made public.)
She told the news crew her son had struggled learning from home.
“I think it will be great for Griffin, because I am not certified teaching a special needs student,” Nickerson said, according to the story. “And I think it will be great for my son to get the help that he needs from the skilled teachers that he needs to get it from.”
One of the people familiar with the investigation said law enforcement officials believe the teen used a shotgun that had been purchased by his mother when he attacked the school.
(The name police gave for the shooter differed from the name initially provided to The Post by three people close to the investigation, John J. Griffin II.)
Police said the tragedy began at about 12:50 p.m. Thursday, when two drivers near the school saw the suspect throw his weapon over the fence and climb it, police said. The driver of a red pickup truck verbally confronted the boy, who fired at the truck, striking it at least three times. The driver of the second vehicle witnessed the shooting, parked in Silver Rail’s parking lot and grabbed his own licensed .40-caliber handgun, police said.
Other school parents identified the man as Kaylub Giamanco, a local contractor with two children at Silver Rail.
The suspect shot through glass panes in a double-door entrance on the south side of the school and managed to get inside. He turned immediately to the left, entered a special-education classroom and opened fire on the people inside.
Stacy Green, a grandmother of two girls at the school, ages 11 and 7, said they they heard many shots from a nearby classroom and heard the special-education teacher yell out “No, please,” before more shots were fired.
Kristin Vanetsky, the grandmother of a fifth-grader, said in an interview that her 10-year-old grandson, Aizen, was in his classroom on the second floor when the gunman blasted into the school.
“He heard so many shots they couldn’t count,” Vanetsky said. Aizen was closest to the door and immediately ran and locked it, she recounted. Then the students and teacher ran and hid behind lockers, which they had been trained to do in an emergency.
“My heart was beating super fast,” the boy told his grandmother in a video she took on her iPhone. Eventually the police came and led the children out, putting them on school buses.
Police said Friday that as the shooter fired into a special-education classroom and a third teacher, whom they did not name, threw her cellphone at the suspect, tackled the shooter and fought to take away his firearm. Giamanco, who followed the shooter into the school, engaged him with his handgun, police said, shooting him several times.
Officers arriving on scene located a pump-action 12-gauge shotgun near the suspect, as well as a backpack. In total, the suspect had approximately 44 remaining rounds of 12-gauge ammunition, police said.
The other two student victims were ages 8 and 11. Drury and a 7-year-old were then taken to hospitals for medical care, where they both remain..
A local pastor, Ben Fleming, said that Giamanco was the right-hand man to a general contractor who had done work for him last year.
Giamanco is an “unassuming” guy and “a total sweetheart” on the job site, Fleming said, who would patiently answer questions for his father on the house remodel.
“He was just an above-and-beyond guy,” Fleming said. “He would do the work, and then my dad would have questions, and then he would slowly walk through what he was doing with my dad, and really graciously care for my parents, which [was] kind of an extra bonus in the middle of a really stressful situation of your house being torn apart.”
Bend, located in central Oregon, is an outdoor recreation mecca about 160 miles from Portland.
Police said the shooter was able to penetrate the “secure vestibule” at the entrance of every school in Bend-La Pine, a district of 16,700 children, according to its website. Visitors are allowed to enter the vestibule but have to sign in before being electronically buzzed through doors that access the rest of the building.
In 2022, officials approved a $249.7 million district-wide security upgrade that included locks that allow classroom doors to be locked from the inside, an improvement officials said would “increase the timeliness and ease of a classroom lockdown in the event of an emergency.” The locks at the school had all been recently updated, school officials said.
On Friday, the Silver Rail Elementary parent-teacher organization said it would be collecting donations to support impacted families.
“Our school and town are grieving an unimaginable tragedy,” the group said in an Instagram post. “We are deeply grateful for the outpouring of love and support, and especially for the teachers and staff who worked so hard to keep our children safe.” The shooting marks the 10th mass killing at an elementary or secondary school since 2006. The 5-year-old victim in Oregon is the youngest of all the people killed.
Ally Lund, 33, a Bend native, came to the school Friday morning with her own children, ages 8 and 6, to lay a bouquet of white flowers at a makeshift memorial in front of the school. Lund said her boss gave her the day off to mourn. “The community is in a state of trying to protect each other,” Lund said. “It’s about helping the families build resilience to go back to school on Monday. I can’t fathom that for them.”
Jeremy Roebuck, Lauren Lumpkin, N. Kirkpatrick, Amy B. Wang, Meg Kelly, Perry Stein and Razzan Nakhlawi also contributed reporting.
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