Skip to content 
The mother of a 5th grade student at Silver Rail Elementary School remembers the terrifying moment when she received a text message from her son Thursday afternoon that there had been a shooting.
“Mom, there was a shooting at school, we’re fine,” the message reads.
“I immediately turned to social media, and it blew up everywhere,” Jenn Johnston told NBC News.
About 20 minutes earlier, Johnston said she received an automated call and text from the Bend, Oregon, school telling her there was a lockdown in place.
Follow live updates here
After receiving the text from her son, she and her husband jumped in the car and drove to school. Johnston said parents were redirected to a nearby church, where they waited for hours with few updates from police and school officials.
It wasn’t until around 6:00 pm that her tearful son jumped off the school bus and ran into her arms.
“The children were driven from school to church and were released to their parents from youngest to oldest,” Johnston said. “My son, in 5th grade, was the last class to be released.”
The shooting happened around 1pm PT after a suspected teenage gunman, armed with a long gun, entered the school by shooting through the locked doors.
A teacher and three children aged 5, 8 and 11 were killed. Two other people, a 7-year-old boy and another school teacher, were seriously injured.
The names of the dead and injured have not been released.
The suspect is believed to be a 16-year-old Bend resident. He was shot and killed by a Good Samaritan who was chasing him, authorities said.
Justin Penfield said he and his wife were together when they received a notification from the school. A friend who was already at the school told them to hurry into the building, he said.
Penfield recalled seeing a “massive police presence” and finding his son’s kindergarten class already outside. Penfield said when he walked his son back to their car, he saw a man standing next to a pickup truck with “seven or eight gun holes in his truck.”
According to Penfield, the man told him he was driving back from lunch when the man saw someone throw what appeared to be a firearm over the fence and then jump the fence into the school’s playground.
The man said he yelled to ask the guy what he was doing because he thought it was weird, Penfield said, recounting his conversation with the man.
According to Penfield, the man told him the gunman turned and opened fire on his truck. Penfield said the man told him he left and called 911.
Mindy Miranda said her 8-year-old daughter was upstairs in her 3rd grade classroom when the shots rang out.
She said they are trying to process what happened “as a family and as a community.”
“I never in a thousand years thought it would be at Silver Rail Elementary, a place where every day I safely drop off our daughter, and she goes to learn and thrive and be part of a great group of people there,” she said.
Bend Mayor Melanie Kebler said at a vigil Thursday evening that the shooting was a dark day for the city and “there are simply no words for the loss we have suffered.”
