The 5-year-old child police said was killed along with two other children and a teacher at Bend’s Silver Rail Elementary School on Thursday is the youngest person ever killed in a mass attack on a U.S. school since the 1960s, according to experts who track school and mass shootings.

Police said a 16-year-old fatally shot three children, ages 5, 8, and 11, and a teacher at the K-5 school which serves about 450 students. A 7-year-old student and a 54-year-old teacher were also critically injured and taken to a hospital for treatment.

On Friday, a family member confirmed that the youngest victim in the Silver Rail rampage was 5-year-old Rhoam Summer.

David Riedman, an assistant professor at Idaho State University and the founder of the K-12 School Shooting Database, which dates to 1966, said the 5-year-old was the youngest person killed in a deliberate, mass-shooting-type attack at a U.S. school.

The database includes U.S. incidents from 1966 to the present in which a gun is fired, used to threaten or assault someone but never fired or in which a bullet hits K-12 school property.

The Bend victim is younger than the children killed in the two deadliest elementary-school massacres in recent decades. At Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, a shooter killed 20 first-graders, including 16 children who were 6-years-old and 4 children who were 7-years-old. And among the 19 children killed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde in 2022, the victims ranged in age from 9 to 11.

The Associated Press/USA TODAY/Northeastern University Mass Killing Database and the Violence Prevention Project at Hamline University in Minnesota also show no victim younger than 5 years old at school mass shootings over the past two decades. The first tracks all incidents since 2006 in which four or more victims — not including the assailant(s) — are killed within a 24-hour period, regardless of weapon, location, victim/offender relationship and circumstances. The second tracks mass shootings — defined as attacks where someone kills four or more people with a gun, in a public place, in one event — since 2000.

Riedman said school-based shootings have occurred two to five times a year fairly consistently over the past 60 years, with only a slight increase in their frequency and the number of victims per shooting. The database contains roughly 3,500 gun-related incidents at schools since 1966, about 200 of which were deliberate, mass-shooting-type attacks.

The roughly 200 attacks have killed 762 people, children and adults, including the four victims in Bend, Riedman said.

Mass shootings at elementary schools have been rare, Riedman said. Most happen at middle and high schools because indiscriminate school attacks are typically carried out by current or former students, most of whom are 12 to 18 years old.

“It’s relatively rare for a shooter to return to an elementary school they attended,” he said. “A school-based shooting usually takes place at the school the person is attending or recently attended.”

And school shootings are no longer just an American phenomenon. Riedman recently launched an international school shooting database which already includes more than 1,100 shootings, including in Canada, Mexico, the Philippines, Thailand, Germany, Brazil and France.

James Alan Fox, a professor at Northeastern University who helped launch the Mass Killing Database, said last year saw the smallest number of mass shootings and mass killings in the database’s 20-year span, including zero school mass shootings with more than four victims. But, he added, “we’re talking about low numbers so focusing too much on short trends can be misleading.”

Over the past few decades, school shootings have occurred only once or twice a year. The most recent involving elementary school children happened in 2025 at the Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis where a shooter killed two students, 8 and 10 years old, and injured more than 20 others at an all-school mass. Another took place in 2023 at The Covenant School, a private Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee where a former student shot and killed three 9-year-olds and three adults.

But, experts said, children much younger than 5 have been killed on school grounds in accidental, drive-by or other non-deliberate shootings. Much younger children have also been killed in mass shootings elsewhere across the U.S., including an 8-month-old who was among 21 people killed in a 1984 mass shooting at a McDonald’s in San Ysidro, California, according to the Violence Prevention Project.

67 years ago, Ruth Urdanivia, despondent over the death of her husband two years earlier and struggling to make ends meet, would poison her five children with Barbiturate and herself. Her children would succumb to the poison, while she was found semi-unconscious. She was arrested and went to trial for her children’s murders. She was found guilty of murder and voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to an indefinite sentence. She served seven years after being paroled and would die in 1982.

During the investigation her previous claims of making ends meet were put into question due to the fact she would receive her husband’s pension, but wouldn’t collect on it because she didn’t read Spanish. This was a lie, due to people saying she and her children were fluent in the language. She also said she couldn’t stand their dirty, small apartment building. The building inside was very well kept and clean. It’s believed she had killed her children not because of the circumstances but because she missed the life she lived when her husband was alive - that of a socialite.

Another photo of the hatchet: https://www.reddit.com/r/masskillers/comments/1wzwmv4/photo_of_the_hatchet_that_was_used_in_todays_mass/

This is a diagram showing the timeline of how the Silver Rail Elementary School shooting unfolded: it shows the perpetrator, Griffin J. John II, approaching the area, as well as how he managed to force entry into the building, and which area he headed to. It also shows exactly how the armed bystander was able to neutralize John.

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The aggressor, a 14-year-old student whose name was not revealed, arrived at school and waited until recess to begin the attack. First, he stabbed a classmate three times. Two other students tried to restrain him and were also stabbed. A teacher at the school armed himself with a chair and managed to subdue the aggressor. Two injured students took advantage of the situation and helped the teacher, completely disarming the attacker. The aggressor remained restrained until the police arrived.

The three victims were two girls and a boy, all 14 years old. Fortunately, they sustained non-life-threatening injuries and were later discharged from the hospital.

The aggressor, a 14-year-old boy, had psychological problems. He was remembered by teachers as an introverted, quiet, and isolated student with no history of fights. He was recording the attack on a video call on a Discord server. He was a member of a extremist server that discussed True Crime, and it was on this server that the attack was broadcast. His Discord username was "Segregation". After the attack, he was taken to CAPSI for psychiatric treatment. After some time, he was discharged. His current whereabouts are unknown, but he is 18 years old today.

Today, October 17, 2026, the school's official page shared this memorial post in honor of the victims. The caption reads: “October 17. Eight years have passed, but the pain has not faded.”

I realized another victim died, because that would make it 21 people counting the victim who died in 2019... But it seems another person died and it wasn't published anywhere.

Statement from her family:

To tell you about who Megan was would take 25 years. Megan was a native Central Oregonian. She grew up in Bend. She had a passion for playing sports, especially volleyball. She was a volleyball coach. She actually turned down pay for her first season as a coach so families who couldn't afford to participate could have the chance to play the sport she loved. Her goal was to be an educator and teach in the school district she loved growing up in. She graduated from Mountain View High School in 2019. She graduated from Boise State in May of 2023. She traveled abroad to Barcelona Spain with TEFL Iberia. Silver Rail was her first job as a teacher, though she subbed there for many years before through High Desert ESD. She LOVED Silver Rail - this was her dream job. Megan was compassionate and had a huge heart. She always fought for the underdog and those with special needs. She was an incredible sister, daughter, niece, and granddaughter. Her friends became her family. She was funny and opinionated, and she lit up the room.

We want the bystander who intervened to know we know he is going through a rough time, but we are grateful and we think he is a hero. You selflessly put yourself at risk for others. We would like the other families to know they are in our thoughts and prayers. Megan loved those children and so we will show you love for her.

Photo confirmed by NY Post. His mother was also briefly interviewed outside her home.

Police have now confirmed in a press conference that his full name is Griffin J. John II, so Griffin is his first name.

https://nypost.com/2026/10/16/us-news/the-extreme-measures-oregon-shooter-took-to-enter-the-school-and-why-he-targeted-special-ed-room/

Aged 19-21 in these photos.

On December 31, 1972, Mark James Robert Essex, a 23 year old former U.S. Navy sailor, opened fire on New Orleans police officers with a Ruger Model 44 outside their headquarters, killing 2 and injuring 3 before running off into the night. Days later on January 7, Essex walked into the Howard Johnson Hotel and killed 4 residents and 3 cops before heading onto the roof and took cover at a concrete cubicle for seven hours before he was shot and killed by sharpshooters and military helicopter machine gun fire.

Essex had previously grown a hatred for white people after racism he experienced in the Navy, alongside hatred for police officers that solidified following the November 16, 1972 killings of two African American students during a campus demonstration. All of the people he had either wounded or killed were white or Hispanic, other than Alfred Harrell, a black police cadet who was killed in the December 31 attack.

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It's also worth noting that the perpetrator's first name is Griffin; his name is Griffin J. John.