Four people — a teacher and three children in an Oregon classroom serving students with special needs — lost their lives after a 16-year-old opened fire, according to officials. The attack ended when a fellow teacher physically restrained the gunman and an armed father intervened, fatally wounding him.
Twenty-four hours into their inquiry into the shooting, investigators disclosed additional details about conditions found at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon. The four people who lost their lives included three children aged 5, 8, and 11, and a 25-year-old educator named Meghan Lambert. One child, aged seven, sustained injuries and was placed in a condition described as stable yet requiring close monitoring, while a second educator also received treatment for wounds that posed no threat to life, according to police.
A staff member whose name has not been released used her phone as a projectile, then physically restrained and grappled with the gunman during the Thursday incident. A man in his mid-thirties, whose two children attended the school, drew a legally owned .40-caliber handgun and opened fire on the attacker several times, ending the threat moments before officers reached the scene.
Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz, speaking at a news briefing, said the teacher — who walked away from the incident without physical injury and whose name he withheld — had positioned herself between the attacker and her students in a way that, in his assessment, kept the death toll lower than it might otherwise have been. Speaking at a news conference, Krantz described the group's conduct that day as having shielded others from potential harm.
Kenda Freeman, whose statement on behalf of her son Kaylub Giamanco — a father of two daughters enrolled at the school — was captured on video and distributed by a broadcast outlet, conveyed that Giamanco had intervened to stop the shooter. In that statement, she relayed his wish to extend thanks to first responders, school staff, and the broader community for their support, and noted that he was not pursuing public attention and preferred to keep away from media contact.
The shooting left a visible mark on Bend — a community of roughly 100,000 residents situated about 175 miles (280 km) southeast of Portland. Fourth-grader Kalani Journeigh, then nine years old, was among those affected; she and her classmates were in a nearby classroom when the gunfire rang out, and she later told a news outlet that the children were crying and gripped by fear, expressing that they thought they might not survive. She told reporters that her pulse had been racing, and then, after two gunshots rang out nearby, it fell silent and was not heard again.
One of her friends, she noted, planned to seek counselling after finding the experience deeply upsetting. Authorities named the shooter as Griffin J John II — a 16-year-old who had previously attended the school as a student with special needs and carried a shotgun during the attack. According to police, roughly 15 rounds were discharged inside the classroom, with an additional 44 rounds found on the suspect's person.
Investigators were working to establish what drove the gunman to act and how he had come to possess a Maverick 88 pump-action 12-gauge shotgun, according to Krantz, who noted that the department shared the public's desire for answers — though a complete explanation might never surface. In the moments before the attack, the gunman was observed tossing the firearm over the school fence and then scaling it to reach the grounds. The gunman then opened fire after a truck driver pulled up and spoke to him from the vehicle.
The gunman forced entry through locked glass doors and opened fire inside a classroom serving students with mixed-grade special needs. According to Krantz, officers had reached the scene within three minutes of the initial call, by which point the gunman was no longer alive.
Residents gathered near the school in Bend on Friday morning, laying flowers and lighting candles along the edge of the crime scene tape. A neighbour, Michael Zappa, 71, who lives just blocks away, expressed gratitude through tears toward the father whose actions he credited with preventing further loss of life, adding that his thoughts were with the man given the weight of what he faced. Separately, the family of Lambert, the teacher who was killed, described her position at Silver Rail as her ideal role, noting in a statement read at Friday's news conference that she had consistently stood up for those who were vulnerable or had special needs. Members of the Lambert family voiced their appreciation for Giamanco, describing him in their statement as someone they regard as a hero.
Data gathered by the K-12 School Shooting Database — a nonprofit tracking platform — show that firearm-related incidents at American schools have left 118 people either dead or injured across 149 separate events so far in the current calendar year, a tally that spans cases where weapons were discharged on or near school grounds or openly displayed on campus. According to the Gun Violence Archive — an independent online tracker that counts any incident leaving four or more people struck by gunfire, excluding the shooter, as a mass shooting — 371 such events have been logged across the period beginning in January 2026. Of those cases, a total of three — the Bend episode among them — unfolded on public school grounds.
