BEND, Oregon — A 16-year-old walked up to an elementary school in central Oregon on Thursday with a long gun, shot through the locked doors to get inside, and opened fire. By the time the shooting stopped, three children — ages five, eight and eleven — and a teacher were dead.
Two more people were fighting for their lives on Thursday night: a seven-year-old child and a 54-year-old teacher, both taken to St. Charles Medical Center in Bend with critical injuries.
What makes this shooting different from so many before it is how it ended. The gunman did not stop because the police arrived. He was already dead when officers reached the scene — shot by a community member who had seen him heading into Silver Rail Elementary School, followed him inside, and fired.
Three minutes between the first call and the police arriving
The first 911 call came at 12:59 p.m. local time. A person driving near the school said someone with a long gun had fired into their car. Within a minute, dispatchers were fielding dozens of calls reporting a shooter inside the building.
Officers reached the school by 1:02 p.m. Inside, they found four people dead — the three children and the teacher — and the suspect dead as well.
Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz said the teenager, a Bend resident, had forced his way into the school by “shooting at locked doors.” It is not yet clear how far into the building he got, and police have not said whether he knew anyone at the school or had ever attended it. He has not been publicly identified, and no motive has been released.
The Associated Press, citing a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation, reported that the teenager used a pump-action shotgun purchased by his mother. Krantz declined to specify the type of weapon at his Thursday-evening press conference.
A school of 450 children, locked down and evacuated
Silver Rail Elementary serves kindergarten through fifth grade — children aged five to eleven — and had 459 students enrolled last year, according to the Oregon Department of Education. The school opened in 2015.
After the shooting, the building was locked down and evacuated room by room. Students were taken by bus to a reunification point at Journey Church on South Highway 97, where parents waited for them. The entire Bend-La Pine school district closed all of its schools on Friday and canceled activities and athletic events.
On Thursday evening, hundreds of residents gathered at Drake Park in Bend for a candlelight vigil. Crisis counselors were stationed at the Bend Central Library.
“No words for the loss”
The grief was raw at the press conference on Thursday night.
“We are heartbroken. We are horrified,” said Steven Cook, the superintendent of the Bend-La Pine district.
Governor Tina Kotek said her heart was “absolutely broken.” She also addressed the community member who stopped the gunman: “To the community member who heroically intervened to stop further loss of life: your actions carry a heavy emotional burden, and I just want you to know that my thoughts are with you as well.”
Bend Mayor Melanie Kebler said simply: “A school should be a safe place where children can learn and feel secure. What happened today should never happen.”
What we still don’t know
Police have not identified the bystander who killed the gunman. Unconfirmed emergency-dispatch audio, reported in US media, suggested the person may have been the father of a student — but police have said only that it was a community member, and that detail remains unverified.
Investigators also have not established a motive, and the names of the victims have not been released; police said all families have been notified. The FBI’s Portland field office is assisting the investigation, and police have scheduled another media briefing for Friday.
Why this matters
This is one of the deadliest school shootings in the United States this year — CNN’s tally of K-12 school shootings put the year’s count at 36 before Thursday — and it landed in a week when schools have been the scene of violence on more than one continent. Just last night we reported on a school roof collapse in Peshawar that killed 30 children and a teacher, a reminder that classrooms keep failing their children in very different ways around the world.
The Bend case will now be studied for its unusual timeline. In most school shootings, the killing continues until police make entry. Here, by the police account so far, the gunman was dead within minutes of the first 911 call — possibly before officers arrived at all.
If investigators confirm that an armed civilian stopped the attack, the case will enter a long-running national argument in the United States about guns in the hands of ordinary people at crime scenes. But there is a second, harder question sitting beside it: the alleged murder weapon, a shotgun, was reportedly bought by the shooter’s own mother. How a 16-year-old ended up carrying it into an elementary school is the question investigators — and, beyond America, anyone watching this country’s gun debate — will not let go of.
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