911 Audio Reveals Oregon Father's Urgent Plea Before He Stopped Elementary School Gunman

Newly released 911 audio captures the frantic moments before an Oregon father entered his daughters' elementary school and fatally shot a gunman, with the father telling a dispatcher, "I have a gun, and I will shoot them right now."

The call from Kaylub Giamanco was placed outside Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend on Oct. 15, shortly before the armed father intervened in an attack that left three children and a teacher dead. The recording was released by the Deschutes 911 Service District.

"Oh my god. Hello 911. Someone's at the school. My daughter's school with a gun," Giamanco says at the start of the call. The dispatcher attempts to keep him from acting, responding, "OK, tell me exactly what happened. Don't do anything. Let me get an officer there, OK?" and adding, "OK, I understand. Stay on the line with me."

As the call continues, voices can be heard discussing the attacker's location and whether shots were being fired. "They're on the south side, entering the building, right now," Giamanco says, before warning that people were being shot. The dispatcher tells him, "Sir, I need you to tell me what's going on. We have help en route."

Giamanco, a 36-year-old carpenter whose two daughters attended the school, later told Oregon Public Broadcasting he doubted he would make it out alive. "That's when I started hearing children pleading for their lives, 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," he said.

Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz said at an Oct. 16 news conference that Giamanco went into the school carrying a .40-caliber pistol he legally kept in his vehicle. Inside, he found a teacher struggling with the 16-year-old attacker. The teacher had thrown her cellphone at the gunman and tackled him before Giamanco shot him multiple times, according to the chief.

The attack killed three children, ages 5, 8 and 11, along with 25-year-old teacher Megan Lambert. A child and another teacher were wounded, police said.

In the weeks since, Giamanco has been widely praised for stopping the gunman, but he told OPB the recognition is shadowed by grief for those he could not reach. "I want to apologize for not saving their babies," he said. "The gratitude for saving people's children is awesome, but there were ones that I didn't save."

Lambert's family offered its own thanks in a statement read during the October news conference. "We want the bystander who intervened to know we know he is going through a rough time, but we are grateful, and we think he is a hero," the family said, adding, "You selflessly put yourself at risk for others."