Gunman kills three children and a teacher at Bend elementary school before parent and teacher stop him

A 16-year-old former student opened fire at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon, on Thursday afternoon, killing three children and a teacher and critically wounding two others before a parent and a teacher inside the building stopped him, according to the Bend Police Department's account of the attack.

The shooting began around 12:59 p.m. at the school, located at 61530 SE Stone Creek Lane on the city's east side. Officers said the gunman, identified as Griffin J. John II, first fired on a pickup truck parked outside before entering the building and discharging his weapon almost entirely within a single classroom. He was no longer enrolled at Silver Rail at the time of the attack but had previously attended the school, police said, and investigators have not yet disclosed a motive. Why he targeted the truck before entering the school has not been explained publicly, and detectives have given no indication of whether he acted alone in planning the attack.

Bend, a city of roughly 100,000 people on the edge of the Cascades best known for its breweries and outdoor-recreation economy, had no recent history of gun violence on this scale. Silver Rail opened within the past decade to serve a rapidly growing section of the city, and Thursday's attack ranks among the deadliest shootings at a K-12 school in Oregon's history.

The casualties and the weapon

Killed at the scene were three children — ages 5, 8 and 11 — and 25-year-old teacher Megan Lambert, of Bend, according to police. A 7-year-old girl was critically wounded and remained in serious but stable condition at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland. A second teacher, 54-year-old Becky Drury, was listed in serious but non-life-threatening condition at St. Charles Bend. John, the suspect, was killed as well, bringing the total number of dead to five.

Police said John fired roughly 15 rounds from a Maverick 88 pump-action 12-gauge shotgun loaded with a mix of birdshot, buckshot and slugs. Investigators recovered about 44 additional rounds of ammunition from his backpack and person. The department has not said how he obtained the weapon or the ammunition, and officers executed a search warrant at his home as part of the investigation into the gun's origin.

How the attack was stopped

According to the police account, a teacher inside the classroom threw her cellphone at the gunman, then tackled him and fought to wrestle the shotgun away. Moments later, a 36-year-old parent whose children attend the school retrieved a .40-caliber pistol he had legally stored in his vehicle, entered the building, saw the struggle under way and fired, striking the suspect multiple times. Relatives identified the man to reporters as Kaylub Giamanco, a Bend carpenter whose two daughters are students at the school, though police have not released his name themselves; the identification circulated among relatives and neighbors in the hours after the shooting. Officers reached the school within minutes of the lockdown being called, police said, by which time the gunfire had already stopped.

Reaction and the scene in Bend

Gov. Tina Kotek issued a statement thanking "the quick thinking and courage of the Silver Rail Elementary School staff and parents — and the first responders who rushed to the scene." She said she had visited the school about a year earlier, when she "spent time with educators and community members calling parents to thank them for the great progress their kids were making," and recalled hearing "the joy and excitement about their school." She separately ordered flags lowered to half-staff statewide in honor of the victims.

"This is a horrible day. No parent should have this day. No community should live through this day." — Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek

President Trump praised the armed bystanders as heroes in remarks Friday, a characterization echoed by gun-rights advocates, while the gun-safety group Giffords called the shooting further evidence of the need for stronger firearm-storage and background-check laws. Oregon voters approved a stricter gun-permitting measure, Ballot Measure 114, in 2022 that would require a permit and background check before any firearm purchase, but the law has been tied up in state and federal litigation for years and had not taken full effect statewide by the time of the shooting. Lawmakers in Salem are likely to face renewed pressure to revisit the measure or introduce separate legislation on safe-storage requirements once the legislature reconvenes, though no bill had been announced by the weekend. Hundreds of residents gathered for a vigil at Drake Park along the Deschutes River in the days that followed, and Bend-La Pine Schools canceled classes districtwide the day after the attack so counselors could be made available to students and staff.

The intervention by an armed parent is likely to intensify a long-running argument over whether civilians carrying firearms make schools safer or more dangerous during an attack. Advocates for expanded concealed-carry rights have pointed to the Bend case as evidence that armed bystanders can end a shooting before police arrive; gun-safety researchers caution that such outcomes are rare and that the same access to firearms that allowed a parent to stop the attack is, in the aggregate, associated with more shootings rather than fewer. Neither side's broader claims were addressed directly in Thursday's police briefing, which focused narrowly on the timeline of the attack itself.

Who is affected

Silver Rail serves families across a fast-growing stretch of east Bend, and the closure rippled across the district's calendar well beyond the school itself, with grief counselors dispatched systemwide rather than to a single campus. The two surviving victims remain hospitalized in separate facilities roughly three hours apart, underscoring the severity of their injuries. Lambert, the teacher killed in the classroom, was 25 and had been teaching in the district; colleagues and parents have not yet spoken publicly in detail about her. The families of the three children killed have not released statements, and police have withheld the children's names. The suspect's own family has not spoken publicly, and investigators have not said whether anyone in the household faces potential legal exposure over how the shotgun was stored or accessed.

School employees across the district now face the practical aftermath: substitute staffing for the classroom where the shooting occurred, building security reviews, and decisions about whether and when students will return to Silver Rail itself rather than a temporary location. Districts elsewhere in Oregon and beyond are likely to revisit their own lockdown drills and visitor-screening procedures in light of how quickly the attack unfolded and how it ultimately ended — not through a resource officer or locked-door protocol, but through the actions of people already inside the building when the shooting began.

What happens next

About 150 personnel from the Tri-County Major Incident Team, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have been assigned to the case, and police said the school grounds will remain closed to the public until at least Tuesday while evidence is processed. Investigators have given no public timeline for determining how John came into possession of the shotgun or whether anyone else could face charges over its storage. Oregon Public Broadcasting, which has provided rolling coverage from the scene, reported that funeral arrangements for the four victims had not yet been made public as of the weekend. The Associated Press wire account noted the attack has already renewed a national debate over school security and firearm access that has followed similar shootings in recent years, with no indication yet of new state or federal legislative action in response.