SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Last week in Bend, Oregon, a school shooting left four victims dead and two injured. It could've been much worse. The shooter was stopped relatively quickly by the parent of a child at the school, Kaylub Giamanco. He was driving by, saw the gunman, stopped and used his own weapon to kill the shooter. That act got a lot of attention.
And now Giamanco is speaking out for the first time to our colleagues at Oregon Public Broadcasting. Jen Baires is one of the reporters who was on that story and joins us now. And Jen, before I say hi to you, I'll just, you know, give a warning to listeners - as you might imagine, we will be hearing detailed descriptions of gun violence. Thanks for joining us, Jen.
JEN BAIRES, BYLINE: Yeah, thank you.
DETROW: Let's start with this. Tell us more about Kaylub Giamanco.
BAIRES: Well, to start, he's a carpenter. He grew up here in Bend, and for him, that day started out like many others until he decided to not eat the lunch he'd packed and go home instead. His family lives just a few blocks from where his daughters go to school. As he was driving in front of the school, he saw a gunman shoot at a truck in front of him and watched him go over the school's playground fence.
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KAYLUB GIAMANCO: And that's when panic flooded into my brain, and I was just that's when I opened my center console, and I just said, no, no, no, no, no. And I grabbed my gun, and then I proceeded into the parking lot. And I saw him walking all the way across the school, and I just was in full panic, like, no, there's children, there's babies in there.
BAIRES: He called 911 but felt he couldn't wait for help.
DETROW: Yeah. What happened next?
BAIRES: He was on the outside of the building at first, and he could see the shooter inside. They had shot out a glass door, and Giamanco dropped to the ground to stay out of view and army crawled through the broken glass. When he got to the special education classroom, he saw a teacher struggling with the gunman through the window. So he swung the door open and fired. The shooter and the teacher both dropped to the ground.
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GIAMANCO: The teacher sprang out of the building, thinking that I was a second shooter. And I could see the fear in her eyes, and that did hurt a lot. She left the room, and this happens in seconds. And then I looked down at the gunman, and he was scrambling for his weapon. And I shot him two more times to make sure that he couldn't move. And that's when the first officer was coming on the scene, you know, fully geared up with, you know, his AR out and his bulletproof vests and the whole works. And I put my - when the gun was on the ground, you know, I had my hands up, and I said, we need your help over here right now, please, please, please.
DETROW: I mean, this sounds traumatic and horrific. How is he doing now?
BAIRES: Well, throughout our interview, you could really see how much he's hurting, and I think you can hear him choking up at points. He feels a lot of guilt for not being able to do more. He says he hasn't met with the victims' families yet, but he'd like to.
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GIAMANCO: I want to apologize for not saving their babies because the gratitude for saving people's children is awesome, but there was ones that I didn't save. And that's probably the hardest thing for me right now.
BAIRES: He also struggles with having killed the 16-year-old shooter, even though he really felt he didn't have a choice. He told us about calling his mom right after.
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GIAMANCO: I called her, and I was like, Mom, I just had to take the life of what I think might be a child because he went into my daughter's school with a gun. And, you know, she was just like, OK, baby, calm down. You know, you did the right thing. You're a hero. You saved lives, and then I just kind of broke down at that point.
BAIRES: He says he's taking space and time now to process what happened.
DETROW: That is Jen Baires of Oregon Public Broadcasting. You can hear much more of this powerful interview at opb.org. Jen, thank you so much.
BAIRES: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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