A string of innocuous choices made one day by an Oregon father brought him to the elementary school where he brought down a mass shooter, an intervention the dad believed would be his last act on earth.Police have credited the quick thinking of Bend carpenter Kaylub Giamanco for confronting 16-year-old Griffin J.John II and stopping the teen shooter’s carnage.The gunman had already killed a teacher and three young children at Silver Rail Elementary School on Oct.
15 and could have continued his attack had Giamanco, 36, not randomly ended up at the crime scene.In an emotional and harrowing interview with Oregon Public Broadcasting published on Friday, Giamanco recalled that terrible day.“I’ve always wanted to change the world, but I’ve felt small.I’m just a carpenter from Bend, Oregon.
I was a nobody other than to my friends and family,” he told OPB.“I feel like if I’m going to have a voice, then I’ll be damned if I’m not going to use it to change this world, to make it a better place.”Giamanco’s presence in the neighborhood near Silver Rail came after a series of seemingly benign decisions the carpenter made that Thursday about lunch.Giamanco packed a mid-day snack but changed his mind about eating it, instead opting to drive him to have leftover tacos with his wife, he said.And on his way home, Giamanco had briefly considered going to a masonry shop to buy some bolts he needed, but again opted to go home for the tacos.Police tape blocks access to Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Ore., on Oct.
16.Payton Bruni / AFP via GettyThose choices led him to Brentwood Avenue near his children’s school, where he spotted a “man in black” with a long gun opening fire on a motorist and a woman mowing the school lawn, he recalled.Giamanco called 911 but couldn’t answer all the dispatcher’s questions.“I said, ‘I’m sorry, I have to go in.
People are going to die,’” said Giamanco who kept a .40 caliber handgun in his truck consol...