Kaylub Giamanco, the 36-year-old carpenter and father, who confronted and killed a school shooter at Silver Rail Elementary in Bend, OR, is finally ready to tell his story. On Friday, Giamanco spoke exclusively with Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) about last week's heroic act, giving a detailed account of the decisions he made which resulted in many lives being saved. 

As RedState reported, 16-year-old John Griffin II shot his way into the school and specifically targeted the Special Education room. According to reports, Griffin had once been a special education student at the same school. His motives for attacking the school have yet to be revealed.

For Giamanco, what seemed like an inconsequential decision to have lunch with his wife at home enabled him to be at the right place at the right time.

In an exclusive interview with OPB, Giamanco described the series of seemingly insignificant decisions that brought him to that intersection at 12:58 p.m. that day — the same time a 16-year-old carrying a shotgun approached his children’s school. It was the packed lunch he didn’t eat, the masonry shop where he didn’t stop, the bolts he needed but didn’t buy, and the gun he says had just been “collecting dust” in his truck console.

Passing by the school that day, Giamanco spotted someone carrying a gun, followed him into the school, and then shot and killed the teen who fired shotgun rounds into a special education classroom. The shooter killed three children, ages 5, 8 and 11, and a 25-year-old teacher. Two other people were seriously injured. Police credit Giamanco with saving many lives at the school of more than 400 children.

In the video segment of the OPB interview, Giamanco gave a fuller account of the steps he took after he spotted the shooter.

Right after he turned on Brentwood Avenue Oct. 15, Giamanco noticed a “man in black” holding a long gun. This must be a prank, or a BB gun, he remembered thinking. Then he saw the shooter fire twice at a red pickup truck and turn toward the school grounds to fire once more at a woman mowing the school’s lawn.

Giamanco said in the video:

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At this point, the gunman had thrown his rifle up and over the fence. And that's when panic flooded into my brain. and I was just, that's when I opened my center console and 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, and I saw him walking across to the school, and I was just in full panic, like: NO, there's children, there's babies in there, and I told my Siri to call 9-1-1. 

Giamanco tried to speak with the 9-1-1 dispatcher while he tracked the shooter, but he said he became frustrated by their protocol steps. Giamanco knew that if he did not act quickly, lives would be lost. 

“I said, ‘I’m sorry, I have to go in. People are going to die.’”

He hopped over the fence as the shooter was passing along on the opposite side of a wallball court, he said. Giamanco pursued while staying out of sight, shuffling along the court as the shooter reached the glass double doors to the school’s side entrance.

“I heard him fire two shots into the doors,” he said.

Giamanco ran from the wallball court to the building and got prone, moving on hands and knees along the windows.

Giamanco sprang into the tactical action that he learned from his years of hunting with his grandfather and later from a veteran friend. Giamanco continued his accounting:

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 that this is probably the last thing I would ever do.

Giamanco continued to crawl on the ground until he spotted the Special Ed room where the shooter had entered. Giamanco then moved along the wall, to stay out of view of the shooter. Giamanco was able to see through the classroom window a teacher struggling with Griffin to try and take away his rifle. It was the bravery of this teacher's efforts, in disrupting Griffin, which affored Giamanco the opportunity to take him out, and he didn't hesitate. 

Giamanco swung the door open and stepped in. “And I fired,” he said.

The teacher and the shooter dropped to the floor. Then the teacher rose and sprinted from the classroom in fear, Giamanco assumed, thinking that he was a second attacker. He looked down at the shooter.

“He was scrambling for his weapon,” he said. “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.”

By then, Giamanco could hear sirens. He went out of the classroom to look for the teacher who’d fled, then laid his gun on the ground and held up his hands as the first officer on the scene appeared, geared in body armor and wielding a rifle. Minutes had passed since he called 911 outside the school.

As police and first responders descended, Giamanco made his way back to his truck. He unloaded his gun, laid it on the floorboard and pulled out his phone.

Giamanco first called his wife and told her what happened, then he called his mother, telling her, "I just had to take the life of what I might think could be a child."

His mother reassured Giamanco that he was a hero and he saved lives. With a shaky voice, Giamanco responded: "You know what, I didn't save everybody. I didn't get 'em all."

A week after the events, you can still sense Giamanco's heartbreak over that fact. He then affirmed to the OPB interviewer:  "I genuinely feel like I was supposed to be there, and if I wasn't there, I just don't know what would have happened."

It is a reflection of Giamanco's character that he wanted to recognize the teacher who chose to struggle with the gunman. 

The teacher that was [sic] wrestling with the gunman, I want to recognize her. She gave me the opportunity to make my shot without losing my life. I saw a clear shot to where I did not have to take her life. 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 the school.

"That's a real true hero," Giamanco said of the teacher. "To not have a weapon and to put yourself between your babies and a firearm."

But heroes are made, not born. From his childhood, OPB reported in the piece linked above, Giamanco was taught how to step up.

He grew up in Bend, a self-described sci-fi nerd who loves riding four-wheelers and motocross bikes with his siblings. His grandfather bought him his first gun when he was 7, a shotgun they took bird hunting in the Ochoco Mountains. He said he and his grandfather led classes to teach kids how to safely handle guns, use a bow and arrow, and survive if you’re trapped in the woods.

He plans to teach his daughters to use guns.

“It’s more dangerous to be afraid of a gun than it is to just be comfortable with one and know that they’re there to either provide you food or to provide you protection,” he said.

Giamanco's father left the family when he was 15, so he learned to be there for his mother and his six siblings.  

But before all that, there were years helping a single mother as the oldest of seven children, there was the motorbike accident when he saved his brother’s life with a makeshift tourniquet, and the informal military training he’d gotten from Iraq War veterans. A lifetime that shaped Giamanco, he believes, and prepared him for what he would do next.

“I’ve always wanted to change the world, but I’ve felt small. I’m just a carpenter from Bend, Oregon. I was a nobody other than to my friends and family,” 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 spoke methodically, and with purpose. He has been inundated by national and local media, as well as advocacy groups on the Second Amendment side and the gun control side. While Giamanco has no desire to be the poster child for either Second Amendment activism or gun control, he does want to use his newfound platform and his carpentry skills to advocate, fund, and promote school safety. This includes school resource officers.

He decided to share his story, he said, because he feels a need to embrace the public eye. He doesn’t know whether he’ll return to carpentry.

“I feel like I was put on this earth to do something more than just fix houses,” he said. [...]

An idea has taken hold in the days since the Silver Rail shooting: a motocross race that donates all proceeds to schools for improving their safety. That could mean funding bulletproof glass on the doors, better locks, and better research to make these kids feel safe at school. He also wants school resource officers at every school.

“We have AI. We are in a world of technology right now. We have smart homes. We have smart cars. Why can’t we have smart schools?” [Giamanco said.]

Why indeed. 

Here is a five-minute portion of the OPB interview. Well worth your time.

WATCH: