A quiet city in central Oregon became the scene of one of the year’s deadliest school attacks on Thursday, when a 16-year-old opened fire inside Silver Rail Elementary in Bend, killing three children and a teacher before he was shot dead by a bystander who pursued him into the building.
The children who died were aged 5, 8 and 11. A 7-year-old pupil and a teacher aged 54 were taken to hospital in critical condition, police said. The kindergarten-through-fifth-grade school, which had 459 pupils enrolled last year, sits more than 100 miles southeast of Portland.
How the attack unfolded
The first emergency call came just before 1pm from a driver outside the campus who reported being fired at by someone carrying a long gun. Further calls came from inside the school, and the attacker forced entry by shooting through locked doors. Officers arrived at 1:02pm and secured the building within minutes.
Before police reached the teenager, a bystander who had seen him entering the school followed him inside and shot him. The suspect was found dead inside the building minutes after the shooting was first reported, according to Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz. The attacker used a pump-action shotgun purchased by his mother, a law enforcement official told reporters on condition of anonymity.
Police said they did not yet know whether the teenager knew anyone at the school or had attended it. Federal investigators have joined the inquiry, and officers spent hours searching the building on Thursday. A detailed account of the police response shows how quickly the scene developed.
A community in shock
The Bend-La Pine school district cancelled classes for Friday as counselling services were set up for pupils and families, with a reunification point established at a nearby church. Oregon’s governor praised the bystander whose intervention may have saved lives and offered condolences to the grieving families.
Bend, a city of just over 100,000 known for its Cascade scenery and outdoor tourism, has no recent history of violence on this scale — a fact that made Thursday’s horror all the harder for residents to comprehend. Investigators have not released a motive, and a community better known for trailheads than tragedy is left asking how a teenager with a shotgun reached a locked elementary school.
The attack has already drawn comparisons to other recent tragedies abroad this week, including a boat disaster off the Horn of Africa that left 139 dead and 84 missing, and comes as Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia stoke global supply fears.
