A split-second was all that Kaylub Giamanco had when he was face-to-face with an armed teenager who went on a rampage inside his daughter’s elementary school in Oregon.
Nearly a month later, Kaylub is opening up about the chilling final moments of the confrontation, including the words he said to the teenager before firing at him.
What still haunts him today is the sounds of children pleading for their lives inside their own school.
Kaylub Giamanco rushed into his daughters’ school after hearing bullets being fired
Trigger warning: this article contains graphic details that may be distressing to some.
Kaylub Giamanco, 36, recalled the harrowing October 15 rampage at Silver Rail Elementary School, which claimed the lives of three students, aged 5, 8, and 11, and a 25-year-old teacher.
The father of two was driving past the school on his way home for lunch when he witnessed the 16-year-old attacker, identified as Griffin J. John II, breaking into the building while carrying a weapon.
Kaylub immediately called 911 after witnessing the teenager throw his weapon over the school’s fence and climb after it.
“Oh my God,” were the first words the panic-stricken father uttered over the call. “Silver Rail Elementary! Silver Rail Elementary!”
He soon realized there might not be enough time to wait for them to arrive.
“This is my daughter’s school. I’m about to go k*ll this kid,” the Oregon father told the 911 dispatcher
The dispatcher was heard asking the father for details about the escalating situation.
“This is my daughter’s school. I’m about to go k*ll this kid,” Kaylub said.
He told the dispatcher he could hear bullets being fired inside the building.
Within a matter of seconds, Kaylub decided to take matters into his own hands and ran into the school.
He then peeked through a classroom window and saw a teacher confronting the armed teenager.
Kaylub had a “split second” to react when the teacher threw her cellphone at Griffin.
“I knew that he wasn’t paying attention to me, so it gave me the opportunity to swing the door open and step in and complete my mission, so to speak,” he told CBS News in an interview this week.
The father of two revealed that the teenager tried to tell him something before he took his last breath
The father then fired once at Griffin, who dropped his weapon and then tried to “regain control.”
That’s when the teenager tried to say something to Kaylub.
“I didn’t want to hear what he had to say, he had taken lives,” recalled the father.
“I said ‘F*** you,’” and fired once again, he said.
“I don’t know what he was about to say and it didn’t matter,” he continued. “It didn’t matter. I just knew he had taken the lives of innocent little babies, you know, 5, 8 and 11.”
Kaylub then dropped his own weapon to check if Griffin was still breathing.
When he tried to check on the teacher who witnessed the horror, she “ran away” from him, possibly thinking he was an active sh**ter as well.
That wasn’t “the greatest feeling,” Kaylub admitted.
His own daughters, aged 5 and 10, survived the incident with no harm.
When cops arrived at the scene, Kaylub put his hands in the air and eventually asked if he could pick up his weapon.
He then asked if he could go to his vehicle and give his loved ones a call.
The father said hugging his daughters brought mixed emotions after the incident
After pulling the trigger on a teenager, Kaylub said the reality of the situation hadn’t hit him until he spoke to his mom and wife.
“I told him he was a hero,” his mother previously told the outlet. “He did what he had to do, and that he did the right thing, and that I was proud of him and that he was a hero and he saved a lot of lives.”
His wife, Kelsey Giamanco, said she could feel something was off even before the call from her husband, who hadn’t shown up for lunch.
She had been following his location and noticed that he stopped by their daughters’ school.
Right after hearing what happened, she drove to the school, and that’s when the husband felt the “gravity of the situation,” he said.
Kaylub said he felt “mixed feelings” when they reunited with their girls.
“I was really sad other people didn’t get to hold their children that night,” the father said. “…But it felt good to just squeeze them and know that they were going to still be here and they could grow up to be, you know, beautiful young women.”
Kaylub is considering setting up a nonprofit focused on school security
Despite being hailed as a hero, Giamanco said the experience has taken a significant toll on his mental health.
He has yet to return to his job as a carpenter, admitting that the sounds he heard inside the school continue to replay in his mind.
The “children’s screams and what it sounds like for them to plead for their life” are the “audio” in his brain.
“That’s where, again, when I’m alone at nighttime and ready to go to bed, I don’t always go to bed,” he added. “Sometimes I get trapped in my brain.”
The father has been considering the idea of setting up a non-profit dedicated to school security.
“If I have these abilities in life to be a protector, if I’m not using them and people do get hurt, that is my fault at the end of the day,” he said.
“Can you even imagine being in this man’s shoes?” one asked online
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