The 16-year-old who killed three children and a teacher with a shotgun at an Oregon elementary school blasted his way through a side entrance before a teacher’s heroism and a father’s quick thinking prevented even more carnage.
As the makeshift memorial in front of Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Ore., grew Friday, with donations of flowers, stuffed animals and candles, police and school officials began offering a clearer picture of how the attack unfolded — and how much worse it could have been.
They identified the shooter as Griffin J. John II, a former special education student at Silver Rail who lived with his mother, Shauntai May Nickerson, a half-mile away from the school. He carried a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun that was registered to Ms. Nickerson, according to a law enforcement official who was granted anonymity to discuss details of the case.
The teenager approached the school on foot a little before 1 p.m. Thursday — picture day at Silver Rail — from an undeveloped and partially wooded lot on the side of the 11-year-old building, which featured modern school safety features at the front entrance.
A man in a red pickup truck was driving by and saw the teenager throw his shotgun over the fence and start to climb it, the police said. The driver “verbally confronted” the gunman, who paused to open fire at him, pelting the truck with shots. The man was not injured.
The teenager then got over the fence, shot through glass panes in a set of doors on the playground side of the building and went into a special education classroom just inside the school.
Inside, he killed three children, ages 5, 8 and 11, and a 25-year-old teacher, Megan Lambert, who family members described as a young educator thrilled to be working in her hometown. He also wounded a 7-year-old girl and a 54-year-old teacher.
Another teacher in the room threw her cellphone at the shooter and then tackled him, Chief Mike Krantz of the Bend Police Department said.
Outside, Kaylub Giamanco, a father of two girls at the school, had seen the red pickup get shot while driving by on his lunch break. He swerved onto the sidewalk and ran inside.
He found the gunman wrestling with the teacher who tried to stop him and shot him several times with a .40-caliber handgun that had been legally secured in his truck, the police said. The suspect, who died, was carrying 44 more rounds of ammunition.
At a Friday afternoon news conference, Chief Krantz confirmed the I.D. of the suspect and then pledged that he would “not say his name again.”
He said the Bend community should give thanks to everyone who worked to stop the shooter.
“I don’t think we can underestimate or underappreciate that courage,” Mr. Krantz said. “When someone is willing to risk their own lives for others? A teacher who is willing to stand and fight for her children? Incredible.”
News of the heroism didn’t do much to soften the pain in Bend, a fast-growing city in central Oregon known for mountain biking, beer making and the ski slopes of nearby Mount Bachelor. The city is also familiar with gun violence: In 2022, a 20-year-old man killed two people and himself at a grocery store just three miles from Silver Rail.
“It’s awful that we know what this is like already,” said Michael LaMaita, the father of a preschooler who lives across the street from Mr. Giamanco. “It’s so weird to have it happen twice.”
Many Bend schools, miles away from Silver Rail, went into lockdown briefly on Thursday after the shooting, and thousands of people attended a candlelight vigil that night. School and recreational activities were canceled citywide Friday, so libraries and businesses that cater to families offered special programs for residents seeking community.
Carissa Honeycutt brought her 9-year-old son, Wallace, to a local park to practice skateboarding in an effort to “keep him busy, keep our minds occupied with other positive things today.”
Wallace attends Ponderosa Elementary but has still asked if it was safe to return to his own classroom. Ms. Honeycutt has reassured him, she said, even though she is also nervous.
Many parents talked of finding counseling for their children, and almost 200 people showed up at the city’s main library Friday morning seeking mental health support.
Sean Fink’s 10-year-old daughter is a fifth grader at Silver Rail and said she was in a classroom one floor above the attack.
“She told me she heard the teacher screaming for her life,” Mr. Fink said, adding that he’ll lean on the close-knit community around the school and its collection of young families to help her.
Derek Cox, another father of a Silver Rail student, said he planned to seek a therapist for his daughter in fourth grade, whose classroom was almost directly above the special education room where the shooting occurred.
“She heard it all,” he said, of his daughter. “I think she’s handling it as well as you could at that age right now, but this is going to have a long-term impact for sure.”
Brian Jolly, the grandfather of Rhoam Summer, a 5-year-old boy killed in the attack, said “the whole thing is senseless, and a shock.”
Mr. Jolly lives in Bend and said he saw his grandson often. “He was in my house a lot, and in my garden with me, and wrestling with me on the couch,” he said. “He was very bright and very mischievous and very fun-loving, and totally without fear.”
Investigators plan to keep the school roped off as a crime scene into early next week, and they still have a number of questions they are trying to answer. Among them: What motivated the shooter, and how did he gain access to the shotgun and ammunition?
The suspect’s mother, Ms. Nickerson, told a local television station in September 2020 that she was grateful her son, then 10, could return to in-person instruction following the Covid-19 school closures. He had struggled with learning from home, she said.
On Friday morning, Ms. Nickerson sat on the deck of her second-floor apartment, smoking and weeping. In a brief conversation, she said that her son “was a good boy,” and that she had seen no warning signs that he might commit violence.
“If I could have prevented this, I would have,” she said.
Investigators have searched the apartment, according to the law enforcement official who spoke anonymously. His mother was cooperative, the official said, and investigators seized the boy’s electronic devices under a search warrant.
The police said the shooter had attended Silver Rail for at least some of elementary school, though they were not able to provide details of when he was a student there or whether he knew any of the teachers he shot. He was not enrolled in the Bend-La Pine school district at the time of the shooting.
Superintendent Steve Cook said the school district will conduct its own investigation to determine how the shooter entered the building, which parents said had an updated front entryway designed to prevent just this kind of attack. Silver Rail had a school resource officer, but the officer was responsible for a half-dozen campuses and was not at Silver Rail on Thursday afternoon.
“Rest assured,” Mr. Cook said Friday, “we will take a hard look at everything we have done.”
The 7-year-old girl who was shot was in serious but stable condition after being airlifted from Bend to a children’s hospital in Portland, Ore., officials said.
She was also the beneficiary of a teacher’s bravery: Heidi Penington, a friend of the girl’s family, said another special education teacher, identified as Becky Drury by Ms. Drury’s husband, threw herself on top of the child as the gunman fired.
A bullet went through Ms. Drury’s arm and the girl’s face, Ms. Penington said. Both are expected to survive.
Jacey Fortin, Livia Albeck-Ripka, Madison Malone Kircher and Mimi Dwyer contributed reporting.
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