A teacher threw her mobile phone at the 16-year-old who opened fire on an Oregon special education class, then tackled him and tried to take his shotgun, Bend police said Friday.
The backstory: Four people were killed Thursday at Silver Rail Elementary in Bend: five-year-old Rhoam Summer, 25-year-old teacher Meghan Lambert, and two students aged eight and eleven whose families asked that they stay unnamed for now.
- Police identified the suspect as 16-year-old Griffin J John II, who had been a special educational needs student at the same school.
Zoom in: A father of two girls at the school was driving past at lunchtime when he saw the suspect firing in the car park and then shooting through a window to get inside.
- He had a legally concealed .40 calibre pistol in his vehicle, police said, and fired at the suspect multiple times, killing him.
By the numbers: The suspect fired as many as 15 rounds inside the classroom and still carried about 44 more rounds of shotgun ammunition when he was stopped.
What they're saying: To the people who showed courage in the face of such violence and intervened to prevent this tragedy from being any worse, we owe you a debt of gratitude, Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz said Friday.
- The mother of Kaylub Giamanco, identified by his family as the bystander, told a local CBS station her son called her moments later and said he looked at the gunman point blank and shot him. She told him he saved a lot of lives, and he answered that he could only wish he had saved them all.
What's next: Police executed a search warrant at the suspect home, and the motive and how he obtained the gun remain under investigation. A 54-year-old teacher and a seven-year-old student were still in hospital.
Why it matters: Two people with seconds to decide changed the death toll, and Oregon Governor Tina Kotek noted that the man who fired now carries a heavy emotional burden of his own.
