A school shooting at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon, left three pupils and a teacher dead after a 16-year-old alleged shooter forced his way into the building, police said.
Kayla Major was working near the school when colleagues began locking the doors after hearing gunshots. Her son was inside the school.
“I don’t think I even had a first thought,” Major said. “I think I stood up, they were locking the doors, and I kind of was figuring out what was going on and why they were locking the doors, and then I heard ‘active shooter’ and then I said, ‘Where?’ and they said, ‘the school behind us.’”
Realising what had happened, Major ran to the school. “I don’t know if my co-workers understood that I had a child that went to school there,” she said. “So I kind of fell back into my seat for a second, and paced for a minute, and I stood up and I unlocked the doors and I just started running over to the school.”
Her son was unharmed. The victims were aged five, eight and 11, while a seven-year-old child and a 54-year-old teacher were taken to St Charles Bend Hospital with critical injuries, according to police.
The alleged shooter was shot and killed by a bystander who entered the elementary school. Police said they received a 911 call shortly before 1pm local time from someone who reported that their truck had been shot several times by a suspect armed with a long gun.
Bend police chief Mike Krantz said the shooter then entered the school by “shooting at locked doors”. A motive has not been released.
Major’s former husband, Tyler, said their son had not understood what was happening during the incident.
“I mean, they’re children and, you know, he didn’t even understand that anybody had died until after we picked him up,” he said. “So we talked to him about that.”
Tyler Major also described seeing another parent receive news that their child had been shot as families gathered outside the school.
“I just saw an older lady come out and I could tell she was looking for somebody who was going to get some bad news,” he said. “It was heart-wrenching. I had to go take a break and sit down and, I don’t know, grieve for her and for the other families that aren’t going to have their loved ones anymore ever again.”
