Oregon school shooter identified as former special-needs student; parent stops attack

On a Friday morning in Bend, Oregon, a 16-year-old walked into Silver Rail Elementary School with a 12-gauge shotgun and opened fire on a classroom of special-needs students. By the time the shooting ended, four people were dead: three children aged five, eight, and eleven, and their teacher, Meghan Lambert, who was twenty-five. Two others lay critically wounded. The attacker's name was Griffin J. John II, and police would later identify him as a former special-needs student who had once attended the school.

The sequence of events unfolded with brutal speed. John fired his way through locked doors, discharging as many as fifteen rounds from the shotgun before being stopped. He still had approximately forty-four rounds remaining when the shooting ended. Authorities are still investigating how a minor obtained the weapon, though Oregon law permits minors to possess shotguns if provided by a parent or with parental consent.

What likely prevented a higher death toll was the immediate action of a teacher in the classroom. She threw her phone at the gunman, then tackled him and fought him directly. Police Chief Mike Krantz described her actions as heroic, noting that her intervention almost certainly saved lives. She was not injured in the struggle. Minutes after the first 911 call came in, a thirty-six-year-old father named Kaylub Giamanco, who had two children enrolled at the school, entered the building and shot the attacker dead.

The shooter's mother, Shauntai Nickerson, spoke to reporters outside her apartment in the hours after the attack. "I'm so sorry, I wish I could have done something," she said. School Superintendent Steven Cook confirmed that John was not enrolled in the Bend-La Pine Schools system at the time of the shooting, though he had previously been a special-needs student there. The attack targeted the special-needs classroom specifically, where all four victims were located.

The incident drew immediate national attention. President Donald Trump called Giamanco a "great hero" and said, "It's a terrible thing, but thank goodness for a man that had a gun and knew how to use it." The shooting marked the twenty-eighth mass killing in the United States in 2026, according to a database maintained jointly by The Associated Press, USA Today, and Northeastern University. The Gun Violence Archive has documented three hundred sixty-nine mass shootings in the country this year, defined as incidents in which four or more people are shot. Everytown for Gun Safety reported at least one hundred incidents of gunfire on school grounds in 2026, resulting in thirty-four deaths.

A seven-year-old child and a fifty-four-year-old teacher were hospitalized in critical condition. The investigation into how John obtained the shotgun continues, with authorities examining whether the weapon was legally provided under Oregon's parental consent statute or obtained through other means.