Hero Dad Who Took Down School Shooter Reveals What He Heard Before Pulling The Trigger

The father who fatally shot a gunman attacking an Oregon elementary school says he is haunted by the children he could not save, even as police credit him with preventing further deaths.

Payton Bruni / AFP via Getty; Facebook

Kaylub Giamanco, a 36-year-old carpenter and father of two girls who attend Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon, detailed the October 15 attack 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.

“I’m sorry, I have to go in. People are going to die,” Giamanco recalled telling the dispatcher.

Giamanco ran to the building and started moving on his hands and knees near the windows.

The 16-year-old gunman killed three children, ages 5, 8, and 11, and a 25-year-old teacher. Two other people were seriously injured. Police credited Giamanco with helping prevent further casualties after he entered the school and shot the attacker, who was armed with a pump-action shotgun.

Giamanco said he had been working at a job site outside Bend that morning but decided to return home for lunch with his wife. As he drove along Brentwood Avenue near the school, he spotted a man dressed in black firing at a red pickup truck and then toward a woman mowing the lawn.

He watched the gunman throw his firearm over the school fence and climb onto the grounds. Giamanco retrieved his handgun from his truck, called 911, and pursued the attacker.

“I just was in full panic, like, ‘No, there’s children, there’s babies in there,’” he said.

After hearing the gunman fire two shots into the school’s glass entrance doors, Giamanco moved along the building’s exterior, staying low to avoid being seen.

“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 said. 

Giamanco crawled through the shattered glass at the entrance and approached a special education classroom. Looking through a window, he saw a teacher struggling with the gunman.

With the attacker’s attention on the teacher, Giamanco opened the classroom door and fired. Both the teacher and the gunman fell to the floor. The teacher then fled.

The gunman, Giamanco said, was scrambling for his weapon. “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.

When the first officer arrived, Giamanco put down his handgun, raised his hands, and asked for help. He later returned to his truck, unloaded his weapon, and called his wife and then his mother.

His mother told him he had done the right thing and saved lives.

But he was already thinking about those he had not saved.

“I didn’t save everybody. I didn’t get them all,” he recalled telling her.

Giamanco praised the teacher who grappled with the gunman with giving him the opportunity to intervene without directly facing the attacker. He does not know her name but hopes to meet her.

“I would love to give her a hug because that’s a real true hero,” he said.

He also hopes to meet the families of the victims.

“I want to apologize for not saving their babies,” he said. “The gratitude for saving people’s children is awesome, but there were ones that I didn’t save.”

Giamanco said he has struggled to sleep since the shooting, reliving the screams and images from inside the school. 

“I don’t want to make this a political situation,” Giamanco said, describing himself as an independent.

He hopes to use the attention to improve school security, including organizing a motocross race to raise money for stronger locks, bullet-resistant glass, and other security measures. He also supports having school resource officers at every school.

“I’ve always wanted to change the world, but I’ve felt small,” 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.”

Giamanco and his family have stayed elsewhere because their home overlooks the school. His five-year-old frequently hugs him and tells him she loves him.

“I hug her, I pick her up, and squeeze her as hard as I can,” he said. “I say, ‘I love you too. You’re my world.’”

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