Oregon man who killed school shooter says he regrets there were children he didn't save

The Oregon man who fatally shot a teenage gunman to end a deadly rampage at an elementary school last week says he was the children's “last line of defense” and that he regrets not arriving soon enough to save them all.

Kaylub Giamanco, whose two daughters attend Silver Rail Elementary, where the Oct. 15 attack occurred, said he feels like he failed the families of those who died.

“I want to apologize for not saving their babies, that’s probably the biggest thing for me right now,” Giamanco told Oregon Public Broadcasting in an interview published Friday. “The gratitude for saving people’s children is awesome. But there were ones that I didn’t save.”

Three children — ages 5, 8 and 11 — and a teacher were killed at the school in Bend, Oregon, last week when a former student there, 16-year-old Griffin J. John II, blasted his way through locked doors with a shotgun and attacked a special needs classroom. Another student was critically injured and a teacher was injured and hospitalized.

Police say another teacher threw her phone at the attacker and wrestled with him before Giamanco shot and killed him after following the gunman into the building.

Giamanco said he dropped off his daughters at the school that morning before driving to work. A few hours later, the 36-year-old carpenter was passing the school again as he was heading home for lunch.

He said he spotted someone wearing black and carrying a long gun fire shots into a pickup truck and at a person mowing the school's lawn before the shooter climbed a fence and headed toward the school building.

Giamanco said “panic fled into my brain.” He grabbed a .40-caliber handgun from his truck's center console and went after the gunman as he dialed 911. He asked the dispatcher to send help before hanging up his phone.

“I said 'I’m sorry I have to go in. People are going to die,'” Giamanco said in the interview.

As he got closer to the building, Giamanco said, he lay on his stomach and used his elbows to crawl across the ground.

“That’s when I started hearing children pleading for their lives,” he said. “And then I started hearing gunfire and I just started army crawling faster and faster. And I told myself: 'This is probably the last thing that I’m ever going to do.'”

Giamanco said he entered the school through a window that had been shot out. Peeking into a nearby classroom, he saw a teacher grappling with the shooter. He said he faced them both in profile, giving him an open shot.

“I felt like I was the last line of defense between him and the rest of the children,” Giamanco said.

He swung the door open, stepped into the room and fired his gun.

Both the gunman and the teacher dropped to the floor. The teacher bolted from the room as the shooter reached for his shotgun.

“He was scrambling for his weapon,” Giamanco 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.”

Police have said Giamanco was carrying his gun legally in his truck and have credited him and the unarmed teacher who confronted the gunman with saving lives. A day after the shootings, President Donald Trump said that Giamanco was a “great hero” who “took care of business.”

A second teacher in the classroom, Becky Drury, said in a statement Wednesday that she lay on the floor, helplessly playing dead, after being struck at close range by a shotgun blast that nearly severed her left hand.

The teacher who struggled with the shooter hasn't been publicly identified. Giamanco told the public broadcaster that she's “a real true hero” whose actions gave him an opening to kill the attacker.

“I can’t tell you what it feels like to take a life … but I can tell you that I genuinely feel like I was supposed to be there,” Giamanco said. “If I wasn’t there, I just don’t know what would have happened.”

Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia.

Kaylub Giamanco, who fatally shot an attacker who had killed three students and a teacher at Silver Rail Elementary School, reacts as he sits for an interview on Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026 in Bend, Ore. (Saskia Hatvany/Oregon Public Broadcasting via AP)

Kaylub Giamanco, who fatally shot an attacker who had killed three students and a teacher at Silver Rail Elementary School, poses for a portrait on Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026 in Bend, Ore. (Saskia Hatvany/Oregon Public Broadcasting via AP)

Kaylub Giamanco, who fatally shot an attacker who had killed three students and a teacher at Silver Rail Elementary School, poses for a portrait on Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026 in Bend, Ore. (Saskia Hatvany/Oregon Public Broadcasting via AP)

Children place flowers at a makeshift memorial outside Silver Rail Elementary in Bend, Ore., Friday, Oct. 16, 2026, a day after a deadly shooting. (AP Photo/Joe Kline)

Police tape is placed outside Silver Rail Elementary school, where a shooting took place, on Thursday, Oct. 15, 2026 in Bend, Ore. (AP Photo/Joe Kline)

FORT COLLINS, Colo. (AP) — Severe flooding in the Four Corners region Friday led to water rescues — some from rooftops — and impassable roads, with some residents urged to evacuate low-lying areas of Colorado and New Mexico and others to stay where they are until levels go down.

The flooding was caused by heavy rain in the desert where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah meet, with more rain in the forecast through at least Saturday. Hundreds of people along the San Juan River in the biggest city in the area, Farmington, New Mexico, were told to evacuate.

Downstream, residents of the vast Navajo Nation braced for floodwaters not expected to peak until late Friday or early Saturday.

“Do not wait to make your evacuations. Make your preparations for yourselves, your families, as well as your animals,” Navajo Nation Deputy Police Chief Donnie Kee urged during a news conference.

The crisis capped a week of severe weather in which rain swamped dozens of homes in Utah and tornadoes blew off roofs, knocked trees onto houses and downed power lines in Arizona.

Rescuers used New Mexico National Guard boats, helicopters and amphibious vehicles Thursday night and into Friday to try to reach stranded residents, San Juan County spokesman Devin Neeley said.

“We’re picking people off of roofs and pulling people out of houses that have 3 or 4 feet (1-1.5 meters) of water in them, and there’s more water coming,” Neeley said.

Rains stopped — at least temporarily — but rivers were still rising.

“This is serious. We’re still sending deputies as I speak to get people out of their homes right now. In fact, our sheriff is damn near going to lose his home today,” Neeley said.

Some 600 Farmington households were told to evacuate, city spokesperson Gina Intoppa said.

Still higher water was on the way via the Animas River, a San Juan tributary that also flows south from rain-soaked Colorado, Farmington Police Chief Steve Hebbe said in the news conference.

“People are not believing that it’s going to be as bad as it is. But you can see the water flow coming, you can see the surge coming,” Hebbe said, calling it a “once in a generation” event.

In southern Colorado, flooding was even worse than forecast and a full 3 feet (1 meter) higher than a 100-year flood on the San Juan River only a year ago.

Before midday, rescuers in a state helicopter were trying to reach two people stranded in a motor home after trying to escape floodwaters, Archuleta County Sheriff Mike Le Roux said.

“We have two adult people and we’ve got three dogs that are as well as they can be, being perched in the middle of a river in a vehicle that’s somewhat submerged,” Le Roux said.

Authorities were assessing who else needed help, including many whose homes weren’t flooded but were cut off by floodwaters.

Le Roux was not aware of any deaths or serious injuries.

In nearby Rio Grande County, trailers at a campground were surrounded by water. Trucks were partially submerged in other areas.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis had declared a disaster emergency in 11 counties.

In the city of Hurricane in far southwestern Utah, a shipping container drifting down a street gave way Friday to a mess of mud and debris to be cleaned up as people who had evacuated earlier in the week returned home.

Damaged roads included Utah 24 through Capitol Reef National Park.

The risk shifted to Utah's southeast, where streams ran fast and high. Flood watches were in effect into the weekend, said Alex DeSmet, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Salt Lake City.

Still, the Four Corners region could get more heavy rain this weekend, with up to half an inch (1 centimeter) forecast to fall in northwestern New Mexico.

The flooding was not unexpected after two months of heavy rain that ended a summer of drought. While parts of the Southwest are rocky with little vegetation and are naturally prone to flash flooding, the recent rains made flooding everywhere more likely.

Tropical systems coming ashore from the Pacific were the cause, forecasters said.

McCormack reported from Concord, New Hampshire. Associated Press writer Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut, and Wufei Yu in Phoenix contributed to this story.

Tree debris obstructs part of a street as storms caused damage at a local apartment complex, Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2026, in Mesa, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

Floodwaters surround trailers at the Fun Valley Family Resort campground and RV part in South Fork, Colo., early Friday, Oct. 23, 2026. (South Fork Fire Rescue via AP)

Pickup trucks are submerged along Highway 160 in South Fork, Colo., on Friday, Oct. 23, 2026. (South Fork Fire Rescue via AP)