Father Who Killed Oregon School Attacker Describes Tense Seconds Before Pulling Trigger

In an interview with CNN, the 36-year-old father who entered Silver Rail Elementary School and killed the attacker on October 15, 2026, described the scene he found himself in seconds before pulling the trigger.

Breitbart News reported that police were quick to note that a “bystander” shot the attacker and ended the attack. The next day the “bystander” was identified as Kaylub Giamanco, the father of two daughters who attend the school.

The New York Post noted that Giamanco is “a 36-year-old carpenter and father” who carries concealed.

Giamanco told CNN he could hear children begging the attacker not to kill them and then he heard gunshots. He said to himself, “I have to go in. People are going to die.”

He described entering the school by crawling through a window that had been shot out and then said, “…the special needs classroom was to my left. At that point, I was on the ground on my hands and knees. I re-racked my weapon to make sure that a live round came so that I knew that I was ready to go.”

Giamanco then explained that he “peeked through a window” in the door of the special needs classroom and saw his chance to stop the rampage:

…I peeked through the window. And at this point I found my opportunity. And I’d seen a teacher on the left struggling with the gunman on the right with the rifle. And I knew that they were on both sides of me, and I knew that he did not know that I was there. And so at that point I swung the door out and open and I stepped in and I fired.

Breitbart News pointed out that Giamanco called his mother after the incident was over and told her he had killed the attacker.

CBS News quoted Giamanco’s mother as she relayed her son’s words: “A man went into my daughters’ school and shot kids and I looked at him point-blank, and I shot and killed him, Mom.”

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and the director of global marketing for Lone Star Hunts. He holds a PhD in Military History with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. He enjoys reading Philosophy and novels by Jack Carr and Nelson DeMille. He is a lever action man in an AR-15 world. Follow him on X: @awrhawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.