That he targeted special needs kids is a totally whole new level of evil!
Here’s an interview with Kaylub’s mother. This was certainly never a conversation she ever anticipated having.
Yes, the whole story is pretty horrific. I feel bad for his family, and all people he killed and their families. I feel bad for the teacher who jumped him, and who may feel guilt for his death. But i don’t feel bad for him.
We’ve reached a point in the thread where I no longer know what we’re talking about. What’s the debate here? What useful purpose is there to agonize over what might have been? We don’t know, we can’t know, with absolute certainty what would have happened had Giamanco not shot the gunman.
I think it’s relevant to the question of whether there are moral issues around the shooting that the murderer may have been subdued at the time he was shot, by a private citizen.
I didn’t do it disingenuously, but I did amend my phrasing to “minor” and “killing.”
What prompted the thread was the widespread praise of the father who killed the teen, and the lack of any sort of sympathy for the teen as a human being.
It just seemed that people quickly swept the issues under the rug in order to celebrate a hero, and I thought it was more complicated than that. I can see that my initial reaction was way out in left field, though.
NYT gives her actions top billing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/16/us/bend-shooting-hero-teacher-dad.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
Another teacher in the room threw her cellphone at the shooter and then tackled him, Chief Mike Krantz of the Bend Police Department said.
Outside, Kaylub Giamanco, a father of two girls at the school, had seen the red pickup get shot while driving by on his lunch break. He swerved onto the sidewalk and ran inside.
He found the gunman wrestling with the teacher who tried to stop him and shot him several times with a .40-caliber handgun that had been legally secured in his truck, the police said. The suspect, who died, was carrying 44 more rounds of ammunition.
Yes she stopped him but maybe would not have prevailed in the wrestling match without other intervention.
The additional detail though does raise the question if fatal force was at that point required, if shooting him “several times” was required.
Not disputing an action made in the moment by a non professional. The assessment was reasonably made. I wouldn’t myself have trusted myself to be sure of subduing him shot just once. Or to not be impacted to shoot several times on more than need to stop alone, seeing dead children and a dead teacher on the ground.
I’m not sure everyone who did that would feel guilty? Or even most.
The teacher is pure hero.
See moderation below
OTOH a police officer, a professional? Pretty sure it would have been every bullet in the gun.
Never mind.
Moderating:
Any response to this point should be taken to this thread:
As well they should. She saved lives.
It’s not a question that really matters because we’ll never have a definitive answer. In most jurisdictions in the United States, deadly force is justified when a reasonable person is in a situation where they fear grevious bodily harm or death for either themself or another person, which I think is an acceptable standard. A standard you seem fine with as you’re not disputing Giamanco’s actions.
For the sake of argument, let’s say we’ve got a nice video and we’re all able to analyze it from the comfort of our own homes. If we all agree Giamanco might have been able to wrestle the teen instead, does that change the morality of his actions? Is he suddenly in the wrong?
This isn’t a question of “good or bad”, it’s about what shade of gray we are looking at.
If we can determine, with space and reflection, that if he’d joined the teacher they could could certainly have subdued the teen, then i don’t think we should prosecute him for murder. He still meets the standard of
And it’s not fair to him to second guess him after the scene is safe. But if we agree that killing the teen was “a necessary evil”, it looks less necessary. It’s a darker shade of gray.
And considering the murderous teen: Anyone, age 16 or 86, who murders random people for no gain is crazy, and deserves sympathy for his mental illness. It must have been horrible to live inside his head.
I’m not seeing any shades of gray here. From my vantage point, Giamanco’s actions were morally correct. Where’s the gray? Either Giamanco’s actions were justified or they were not. We all seem to be in agreement that they were justified, so what difference does it make how light or gray it is?
I think a lot of people are comfortable with the idea of self-defense in the abstract but struggle with conflicting values when real life examples rear their ugly head. Is that what’s happening here?
I think killing people is bad. Even killing bad people. Sometimes, it’s less bad than the alternative. That was probably true in this case, and the killer certainly had reasonable cause to believe that in the moment.
That’s a fine discussion in the abstract, but this is the real world. And in this case the age of the shooter is irrelevant.
The shooter did not identify himself as a 16-year old. The driver of the car he shot at while outside did not describe him as a teenager, nor did the teacher who tackled him, nor did the armed citizen who finally stopped him. To put it succinctly, none of the people involved in this tragedy knew or suspected the shooter was a 16-year old.
Would this thread have even been started if the shooter turned out to be 30 years old? Would the tragedy and trauma to the victims and their families been any worse or any less if the shooter had been 30?
SDMB is literally the abstract, not the real world. I mean, I take your point, but the real-world events have already happened.
I do see shades of grey in what happened. I don’t know that there was a better outcome, but I just can’t be sanguine that killing people is a great solution to a problem.
Non-lethal solutions are preferable to lethal force; I hope everyone agrees on that. The passer-by in this case was not armed with stun grenades, though, only a lethal weapon. It also seems that the lethal defense was reasonable here according to the standards to prevent imminent deaths, and, under those circumstances, when one pulls out a gun this is not a Hollywood movie where you can take a trick shot and shoot the gun out of someone’s hand, you are going to shoot them a couple of times to instantly incapacitate them, with the expectation they will not survive (but the point is to stop them from hurting others, not to murder them).
He was also armed with his arms, like the teacher. 
It’s not a contest. The goal is to survive and end the threat by the quickest, surest means at hand.
Yeah, I mean, someone could have just snatched the gun away.
Please let me preface this with the idea that the benefit of the doubt lays with the dad for his actions.
Some thoughts that do occur -
- Arguing this in the abstract is important - not so much for the what has already happened, but for what we as a society see as appropriate actions for “the public” to take moving forward if the same or similar reaction should arise again
- The age of the teen is relevant - or probably more accurately, his size - more than half of the 16 year olds that I see around me, I would still feel comfortable “taking on” in a wrestling match (not sure of the good samaritan’s size/physical condition)
- Given that this happened in the hallway of a school - what are the chances that it was under video surveillance (the school I work in, it most likely would have been)
- If there is indeed good quality video - should it be released?
“The goal is to survive and end the threat by the quickest, surest means at hand” - Is it though?
This seems to mean that trying NOT to take a life (even one of a mass murderer) doesn’t matter at all?
Which I can’t agree with.
The life of the shooter might be a very priority, but I think it does need to be considered
Plus, it’s not like the teacher had a gun but weighed her options and decided that the cell phone and bare hands combo would be sufficient. She was unarmed and in a desperate situation. She did what she could.