The humble hero dad who stopped an active shooter in Oregon says he was in “full panic mode” when he saw the teenage gunman head toward the school his daughters attend but that he never questioned the decision to put his life on the line to save others.
Kaylub Giamanco, 36, was driving to his home in Bend when he first spotted the gunman, now identified as 16-year-old Griffin J. John II. John had fired his gun toward a Toyota pickup truck before he threw the rifle over the school fence and climbed on to the property.
“That’s when panic flooded into my brain,” Giamanco told Oregon Public Broadcasting in his first interview after the Oct. 15 shooting that killed three students and a teacher at Silver Rail Elementary School.
“I opened my center console
and I just said, ‘No, no, no, no, no,’ And I grabbed my gun and I put the magazine in it and I racked the action, and then I proceeded into the parking lot,” he told OPB. “I saw him walking all the way across to the school, and I just was full panic. Like, no, there's children, there's babies in there.”
Giamanco said he called 911 as he made his way to the school while trying to make sure the shooter didn't see him. He said the dispatcher was asking him detailed questions he didn't have time to answer.
"I said, I'm sorry, I have to go in. People are going to die,'" Giamanco recalled.
Soon after that, heard John fire two shots into double doors at the school. Trying to be stealthy, Giamanco said he "got prone" and started crawling near some of the windows.
"And that's when I starting hearing children pleading for their lives. And then I started hearing gunfire, and I just started Army-crawling faster and faster," he said. "I told myself, 'This is probably the last thing I'm ever going to do.'"
Giamanco crawled through a window that had been shot out. Once inside, he said the special needs classroom was to his left.
"I re-racked my weapon to make sure that a live round came out, so that I knew that I was ready to go," he said. "And then I peeked through the window, and at this point, I found my opportunity, and I had seen a teacher on the left struggling with the gunman on the right with the rifle. ... I knew that he did not know that I was there, and so at that point, I swung the door out and open, and I stepped in and I fired."
He said John dropped to the ground and the teacher ran out thinking Giamianco was a second shooter. And then Giamanco saw John "scrambling for his weapon."
Giamanco said he then shot John two more times "to make sure that he couldn't move because I was afraid of him shooting anybody else."
Police arrived soon afterward and Giamanco called his wife and then his mother within minutes. He told his wife to get to the school immediately, "and that I had just had to shoot and kill somebody and that I had to watch him take the lives of children and teachers."
"Then I called my mom ... and I was like, 'Mom, I just had to take the life of what I think might be a child because he went into my daughters' school with a gun," he recalled. "She was just like, 'Okay, baby, calm down. You did the right thing. You're a hero. You saved lives.'"
That's when Giamanco said he broke down.
"I was just like, 'You know, I didn't save everybody. I didn't get them all,' and I kind of just broke at that point," an emotional Giamanco said. "I felt like I was having a heart attack almost the entire time. I've never had so much chest pain."
Giamanco said he still doesn't know the name of the teacher who was struggling with the gunman but that he wanted to thank her and give her a hug.
"She gave me the opportunity to make my shot without losing my life," he said. "Without her and that little spur of the moment delay, I very much feel like I would have been facing the shooter head-on, and we could have both died, or I could have died, and I felt like I was the last line of defense between me and the rest of the children in school."
He called her "a real true hero," adding: "To not have a weapon and to put yourself in between your babies and a firearm ... you know, it's a lot."
Giamanco said he also wants to meet with the victims' families "and just cry with them, hold them."
"I want to apologize for not saving their babies," he said. "That's probably the biggest thing for me right now, because the gratitude for saving people's children is awesome, but there was the ones that I didn't save, and that's probably the hardest thing for me right now. ... I do feel like I failed them."
Though Giamanco struggles with the knowledge that he killed a teenager and couldn't save everybody, he said he feels like he was supposed to be there that day to stop John.
"If I wasn't there, I just don't know what would have happened," he said. "I feel a higher calling to change this world. I've always wanted to change the world, but I've felt small. You know, I'm just a carpenter from Bend, Oregon. You know, I was a nobody other than to my friends and family."
Now, he said, he wants to use his voice to raise awareness and raise money for school security across the nation, starting with Bend.
"These are these are the thoughts that help make me feel empowered," he said. "I feel like if I'm going to have a voice, then I'll be damned if I I'm going to use it to change this world to make it a better place."
Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime and courts reporter who covers the death penalty, cold cases and breaking news for USA TODAY. Follow her on X at @amandaleeusat.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'There's babies in there': Hero dad recounts stopping Oregon shooter
