A 16-year-old opened fire Thursday inside a special needs classroom at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon, killing three children and a teacher before he was stopped.
Police identified the shooter as Griffin J. John II. He was armed with a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun that had been legally purchased by his mother, Shauntai May Nickerson. Under Oregon law, a minor can possess a shotgun if a parent provides it or consents. Investigators are still determining exactly how he obtained the weapon that day.
He approached the school on foot, threw the shotgun over a fence, and climbed over it. After firing at a vehicle outside, he shot through the glass panes of locked side doors to force entry, then went directly into the special education classroom near that entrance. All the victims were shot in that room: children ages 5, 8, and 11, and 25-year-old teacher Megan Lambert. A 7-year-old and another teacher were wounded.
School officials confirmed John was a former special needs student at Silver Rail and had previously been in the district's NEST program for students with intensive behavioral and social challenges. He was not enrolled in the district at the time of the shooting.
A teacher in the classroom threw her phone at him and tackled him. A father of two students at the school, Kaylub Giamanco, then entered and shot the gunman, ending the attack before police arrived.
Nickerson later told reporters her son was “a good boy” and that she wished she could have prevented it. In a 2020 interview she had said he struggled with remote learning during COVID school closures. Motive remains under investigation.
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