The father of two who followed a gunman into his daughters’ elementary school and killed him last month is opening up about the harrowing encounter.
Kaylub Giamanco, 36, sat down with CBS News to discuss the Oct. 15 mass shooting at Silver Rail Elementary School, which left three students – ages 5, 8 and 11 – and a 25-year-old teacher dead before the father of two intervened.
“It was like fight or flight, and something clicked, and I just, I analyzed the situation. I knew something was up. All the emotions flood out of me. I just kind of went into a mission mode,” Giamanco told CBS.
Giamanco told the outlet he ran into the school after he witnessed the 16-year-old gunman break into the school while carrying a weapon. Giamanco was driving by the school on his way home for lunch at the time of the shooting and called 911 to alert police before deciding there wasn’t enough time to wait and ran inside himself.
Once inside, Giamanco told CBS he peeked through a classroom window and saw a teacher struggling with the shooter. Giamanco told the outlet he saw the teacher throw her cellphone at the shooter, which gave him a “split second” to act.
“I knew that he wasn’t paying attention to me, so it gave me the opportunity to swing the door open and step in and complete my mission, so to speak,” Giamanco told CBS.
Giamanco said he shot the gunman once, causing the shooter to drop his weapon. The gunman was then “trying to regain control” and tried to say something to Giamanco before the father of two shot him again, he recounted during the interview with CBS.
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“I didn’t want to hear what he had to say, he had taken lives,” Giamanco told the outlet. “I said ‘F--- you.’”
Giamanco added: “I don’t know what he was about to say and it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter. I just knew he had taken the lives of innocent little babies, you know, 5, 8 and 11.”
Giamanco’s two daughters, ages 5 and 10, survived the mass shooting.
