Shotgun in Bend School Shooting Was Birthday Gift, Sources Say

The shotgun a 16-year-old used to kill three children and a teacher at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon, was a birthday gift from his mother, sources told CBS News.

The Maverick 88 pump-action 12-gauge was bought legally in August 2026 by Shauntai Nickerson, the mother of Griffin J. John II, and given to him for recreational use, those sources said. Two senior law enforcement officials told NBC News the mother purchased the long gun around her son's birthday in August.

No one has been charged in connection with the October 15 attack. Nickerson has been cooperative with law enforcement, according to officials familiar with the investigation. Police executed a search warrant at the teenager's house on Oct. 16 and collected evidence.

A $320 shotgun and three kinds of ammunition

Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz said officers found the Maverick 88 near the suspect, along with a backpack. The gun holds six to eight rounds and retails for about $320.

Three types of ammunition were used in the shooting, Krantz said: birdshot, buckshot and slugs. The gunman fired as many as 15 rounds. Another 44 rounds were found at the scene.

Oregon bars anyone under 18 from possessing a firearm, but state law allows a minor to possess a shotgun if a parent provides it or consents to it, which is one reason the purchase itself sits in a different legal category than the shooting.

Three minutes from the first 911 call

At 12:58 p.m., John threw the shotgun over the school fence and climbed after it. A passing driver in a red pickup confronted him, and the teenager fired on the truck, striking it at least three times, Krantz said. The driver kept going and made the first 911 call at 12:59 p.m.

John then shot through the glass panes of a set of locked double doors to get inside. He walked into the first classroom on the left, a special education classroom. Four adults and five children were in that room.

"All of the victims were shot in that classroom," Krantz said. Officers arrived at 1:02 p.m., three minutes after the first call, and found the shooter already dead.

The four people killed

Three boys, ages 5, 8 and 11, and a 25-year-old teacher were killed. Police identified the teacher as Megan Lambert, a volleyball coach.

The 5-year-old was identified as Rhoam Summer. He had long, curly hair, and his death has left his family "broken and lost," they said in a statement. He is the youngest person ever killed in a U.S. school shooting, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database, which dates to 1966. The families of the other two boys asked that their names not be released.

Two others were wounded. A 7-year-old girl was treated at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, where she was in serious but stable condition. A 54-year-old teacher, identified to CBS News by her family as Becky Drury, had serious but non-life-threatening injuries and was treated at St. Charles Medical Center.

The father who followed him inside

Kaylub Giamanco, 36, a lifelong Bend resident with two daughters at Silver Rail, saw the parking lot shooting from his vehicle. He took out a .40-caliber pistol he legally owned and kept in the car, then went in after the gunman.

"As he made entry through the forced open doors, he heard shooting and saw a teacher involved in a physical altercation with the suspect," Krantz said. "He then went to the classroom where the struggle was underway and fired his weapon, striking the suspect multiple times."

That teacher threw her cellphone at the gunman, tackled him and fought to take the shotgun away from him. She was not hurt. "She almost certainly helped prevent more bloodshed," Krantz said.

Giamanco's mother, Kenda Freeman, who lives in Sacramento, said her son called her soon afterward. "Kaylub knew something was not right, so he pulled up onto the grass, grabbed his gun and basically stalked the gunman back into the school," she said in an interview with CBS News Sacramento. "He crawled through a window that the gunman had shot out. He army-crawled through the window."

She said he told her a man went into his daughter's school and shot kids, and then said, "I looked at him point-blank, and I shot and killed him, Mom." She told him he was a hero and that he saved a lot of lives. His answer, she said: "Mom, I couldn't save them all."

His family said in a written statement that he is not seeking recognition and will not give interviews. President Trump called him a "great hero" who "took care of business." Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek said the bystander "heroically intervened to stop further loss of life" and that his actions carry "a heavy emotional burden."

A 2023 arrest sits in the file

Bend police arrested Nickerson in March 2023 on charges of fourth-degree assault, a violent Class A misdemeanor, and harassment. In court, the assault charge was dropped. She pleaded guilty to harassment, a Class B misdemeanor, according to court records.

Oregon law lists a violent misdemeanor within four years as a disqualifier for a gun purchase. An assault conviction may have blocked her purchase of the Mossberg Maverick 88.

Recent court records show Nickerson lives several blocks from Silver Rail on Brosterhaus Road. The Deschutes District Attorney's Office would not confirm details about the gun's registration. The Bend Police Department also declined, and its Oct. 19 update said it was not sharing more about the suspect or the weapon.

Whether criminal charges are filed against the shooter's mother or anyone else will depend on whether prosecutors find evidence of crimes such as criminal negligence. She has not been charged with anything in connection with the shooting.

The gun law Oregon voters passed and courts froze

Oregon's gun laws rank 12th strictest in the country, according to Everytown for Gun Safety. The state has mandated secure storage, barred guns at the state Capitol, given universities the power to prohibit guns on campus, and banned 3D-printed and untraceable ghost guns.

Measure 114, written by an interfaith group and approved by voters in November 2022 by a 1.3% margin, would go further. It would require a permit to purchase, a fully completed federal background check, and a safety class in which buyers prove they can load, fire and store a firearm. It caps magazines at 10 rounds and would criminalize transferring a gun to someone without a valid permit or a completed background check.

A Harney County judge ruled in 2023 that the measure violated the Oregon Constitution. The Oregon Court of Appeals reversed that ruling in March 2025, and the measure is awaiting a ruling from the Oregon Supreme Court. It is not in effect.

What the mother has said

Nickerson appeared on Bend NBC affiliate KTVZ on September 29, 2020, talking about her son's return to in-person classes. Griffin was 10. She said he had struggled to learn from home during the pandemic.

"I think that it'll be great for Griffin, because, you know, I am not certified in teaching, you know, a special needs student," she said in that news package. "And so I think that it'll be great for my son to get back in there and get the help that he needs with the skilled teachers that he needs to get it from."

Speaking from the balcony of her apartment near the school on Oct. 16, she said: "I'm so sorry, I wish I could have done something. I'm sorry for their loss." She declined to say how her son got the shotgun.

The parents of Rhoam Summer have hired attorneys to examine the school's security protocols, where the weapon was bought and how a 16-year-old came to have it.

Locked doors, cameras and a shot-out pane of glass

At Silver Rail, visitors enter through a secure vestibule, check in with office staff and sign in on an electronic system that verifies they passed a background check before they are buzzed through. The school has cameras inside and outside. No school resource officer was there when the shooting began.

Voters also approved new door-locking hardware for the classrooms, letting teachers lock a door by flipping a switch. The gunman never used a door the way a visitor would. He shot out the glass.

Classes across the Bend-La Pine district resume October 21. Classes at Silver Rail are suspended indefinitely. The FBI is assisting the investigation.

No motive yet

Police have not identified a motive. Investigators are going through his computer, phone, social media and search history, and are looking at whether he had been fixated on violence, including past mass shootings, law enforcement sources told CBS News. Those sources said the work is in early stages.

John had attended Silver Rail as a special needs student, Superintendent Steven Cook said, and was not enrolled anywhere in the district at the time of the shooting.

Next-door neighbor Drue Bernstein, 31, said he sometimes saw John and his mother passing by and occasionally saw the teenager with friends. Nothing he noticed struck him as troubling, he said, though the encounters were brief.

John was an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, tribe CEO Kurtis Barker confirmed. "The Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians is heartbroken by the tragic loss of life at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend," Barker said, extending condolences to the families of those killed and to the students and staff who were there.