MINI TRUE CRIME ROUNDUP: The Silver Rail Elementary School tragedy and jury selection begins for Tops mass shooter trial

Lauren Barry (0:03)

This is a True Crime Roundup from The On Deadline Podcast. We explore crime stories reported on by Audacy's radio newsrooms across the country. I'm your host, Lauren Barry. This week, we're going to hear about the deadly shooting at Silver Rail Elementary School in Oregon, where the youngest school shooting victim, a five-year-old, was murdered this week, along with an eight-year-old, an 11-year-old and a 25-year-old teacher.

We're also looking back at another mass shooting, the Buffalo Tops Supermarket Massacre from 2022 Jury selection is underway in the trial of alleged shooter Peyton Gendron, and we'll hear multiple experts weigh in on that process.

At around 1 p.m. on Thursday, October 15th, 911 calls started coming in about an active shooter near Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon. The culprit was allegedly shooting at a vehicle with a long gun before he entered the elementary school. Officers were at the scene within minutes, but tragedy had already fallen on the Silver Rail campus.

A 5-year-old, an 8-year-old, and an 11-year-old had already been fatally injured, along with a 25-year-old teacher named Megan Lambert. A 7-year-old and a 54-year-old were transported to a local hospital with critical injuries. And the shooter, identified by authorities as 16-year-old Griffin J. John II, was shot dead by a community member, according to the Bend Police Department. The department said that the community member's children go to the school. An investigation into the incident and the shooter's motivation is ongoing. This case is yet another horrifying entry into the list of elementary school shootings that have claimed young victims, including the Sandy Hook shooting in Connecticut and the Robb Elementary School shooting in Texas. What can be done to prevent these terrible incidents? It's a question that seems frustratingly hard to answer. When a school shooting broke out at Annunciation Catholic School in Minnesota last year, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry dismissed the notion that thoughts and prayers are enough to prevent these senseless tragedies. Chad Hartman, out of Audacy Station WCCO News Talk in the Twin Cities, brought up that quote from Fry when discussing the shooting in Bend this week.

Chad Hartman (3:08)

Three kids, five, eight, and eleven, are gone now. Teacher, gone. The shooter, gone. Thank God there was a person there. Had a weapon. This isn't a show where we're coming for all your guns, so save that nonsense.

This guy, 16 year old, not even a guy, a kid, who knows what's going on.

Shot into a lock of some sort, what was supposed to be a secure vestibule, and a person saw that, followed, took him down, but not before a five, eight, and eleven year old are gone and a teacher gone. Think about all the things the five, eight, and eleven year old are not going to have. It was picture day, by the way. Picture day. Their mom, their dad, both, someone, help them get ready, put on nice clothes, posing for pictures. How about when those pictures come back, and they're not there?

Won't see their friends anymore. Won't go to the next middle school, or junior high, or high school. Won't go to the prom, won't play sports. Won't go to trade school, college. All the laughter, all the fun, maybe the kids they would have had, the jobs they would have had. They're gone.

I've said for a while now, I'm furious that we have this as our greatest failure. It is the number of mass shootings we have in this country so disproportionately higher than other Western nations. It's not close.

And I want to see states be a part of what I thought states were a part of and address it and try different things. If your state wants to just funnel all the money into more mental health, fine. Let's just see what happens. Let's try it. If your state wants to make it incredibly difficult to get guns, by the way, Oregon, one of the tougher states to get guns.

If you want to do that, go ahead. If you want to arm teachers, go ahead. Let's try some things. Like, the arming teachers still gives me great concerns. I'm not one who advocates that because I just worry in the complete panic what's going to happen. But I don't know how much experience this individual had, who had the weapon, who took down the shooter. And this person apparently acted in a reasonable, heroic way. But we're not going to do a thing. We're going to do nothing. And we are so desensitized to it that by tomorrow, we'll barely be talking about this. And other shows that are topical, if they're not talking about it today, I think they're making a mistake, but I can't blame them because when you count college campuses, we're well over 50 shootings this year.