Teen gunman kills three children and a teacher at Oregon elementary school

A 16-year-old armed with a long gun shot through the locked doors of Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon, on Thursday afternoon, killing three children and a teacher before a bystander who followed him into the building shot and killed him. Two more people, a 7-year-old child and a 54-year-old teacher, were critically wounded and remained hospitalized Friday at St. Charles Bend.

The attack began just before 1 p.m. Thursday, when a 911 caller less than a mile from the school reported hearing gunfire and, moments later, that someone had fired into a parked car, according to a timeline reported by NBC News. Within minutes, dispatchers were flooded with calls reporting a shooter inside the building. Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz said officers reached the school at 1:02 p.m., roughly three minutes after the first call, and learned almost immediately that the gunman was already down.

What happened

Police have said the teenager, a Bend resident whose name has not been released because he is a minor, forced his way into Silver Rail by firing through the school's locked entrance doors. He then moved into the building, where the shootings occurred. According to the Bend Police Department, a community member who witnessed the gunman entering the school followed him inside and shot him, an intervention officials credited with limiting the death toll. That person's identity has also not been made public.

Students and staff were evacuated classroom by classroom as officers cleared the building, then bused to Journey Church, about a mile away, where families were reunited with their children through the afternoon and evening. The Bend Police Department's public case file lists the address as 61530 SE Stone Creek Lane and assigns the incident case number 2026-00057584.

The numbers

The dead include three children — ages 5, 8 and 11 — and one teacher, in addition to the shooter. The two critically injured victims, a 7-year-old and a 54-year-old teacher, were taken to St. Charles Bend. Silver Rail Elementary enrolls roughly 400 to 450 students in kindergarten through fifth grade and employs more than 40 staff members. It sits inside the Bend-La Pine School District, which serves more than 16,000 students across 33 schools; the district canceled all classes, activities and athletic events for Friday. Bend itself is a fast-growing city of about 107,000 people in Oregon's high desert, roughly 160 miles southeast of Portland.

• 3 children killed, ages 5, 8 and 11
• 1 teacher killed
• 1 shooter, age 16, killed by a bystander
• 2 critically injured: a 7-year-old and a 54-year-old teacher
• Police response time: about 3 minutes from first call to arrival

How Oregon got here

Oregon has absorbed several mass shootings in the past dozen years, though none inside an elementary school until Thursday. The deadliest came in October 2015, when a gunman killed nine people and himself at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg. In June 2014, a 15-year-old student fatally shot a freshman classmate and wounded a teacher at Reynolds High School in Troutdale before killing himself. Bend has its own more recent history of gun violence: in August 2022, a man killed two people at a Safeway supermarket before being shot dead by an armed bystander, a sequence of events that drew comparisons on Thursday to how Silver Rail's attack ended.

The Douglas County Sheriff's Office, whose deputies responded to the 2015 Umpqua shooting, posted a message of solidarity with Bend police and the school community Thursday. Investigators have not disclosed a motive for the Silver Rail attack, how the shooter obtained the long gun, or whether he had any prior connection to the school. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives sent agents from its Portland and Eugene offices to trace the weapon, and FBI personnel from Portland were assisting Bend police. Oregon State Police may take over as the lead investigating agency in the coming days, according to local reporting.

Who is affected

Beyond the families of the dead and wounded, the shooting has shaken a school community of several hundred children and the broader Bend-La Pine district, which, ABC News reported, abruptly closed all 33 of its schools for the day after. Crisis counselors were made available Thursday evening at the Deschutes Public Library's downtown Bend branch for students, parents and staff trying to process the attack. Police said they expect to maintain a visible presence at Silver Rail for several days as the investigation continues and as the building is examined and, eventually, reopened.

The reunification process at Journey Church stretched for hours Thursday afternoon as parents arrived to collect children bused from the school, many of whom had sheltered in classrooms during the lockdown. Teachers and staff who were inside the building during the attack are also being offered support, district officials said, alongside the family of the still-unidentified bystander whose actions are credited with stopping the gunman before he could do more harm.

Reaction

Bend Mayor Melanie Kebler spoke at a vigil held Thursday evening at Drake Park, where hundreds of residents gathered with candles. "There are simply no words for the loss that we have suffered today," she said. Bend-La Pine Schools Superintendent Steve Cook told reporters at a news conference, "We are heartbroken. We are horrified." Chief Krantz, describing his department's preparation for exactly this kind of call, said, "Unfortunately, this is something we train for on a regular basis, and we must."

Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, who has visited Silver Rail Elementary in the past year, issued a written statement mourning the victims and praising the response of school staff, first responders and the bystander who intervened.

"My heart is absolutely broken. Our hearts will stay broken in the days and weeks ahead. No parent should have this day. No community should live through this day. We must come together and support each other, neighbor to neighbor, Oregonian to Oregonian."

Kotek ordered state flags lowered to half-staff in honor of the victims, and the Oregon Department of Emergency Management said it was coordinating support across state agencies for the Bend community. The office said additional state resources, including behavioral health support, would be made available to the district and to Deschutes County in the coming days.

What happens next

The investigation is still in its early stages. Police have not released the names of the victims, the shooter or the bystander, and they have not said whether charges might eventually be considered against anyone other than the shooter, including over how he obtained the firearm. The ATF's weapons trace and ballistic analysis are expected to inform that question in the coming days.

Bend-La Pine Schools has not announced when classes will resume districtwide or at Silver Rail specifically, though the superintendent indicated counseling resources would remain available as students and staff return. Memorial gatherings are expected to continue through the weekend, and the Oregon Legislature, which does not reconvene for its regular session until next year, is likely to face renewed pressure from lawmakers in both parties to address school security and gun access before Oregon's 2026 midterm elections next month. For now, the state's attention is on Bend, where flags are flying at half-staff and a community is beginning to grieve.