For three long hours on Thursday afternoon, Joe Camarlinghi waited at a Bend, Oregon, church for word about his daughter.
Camarlinghi had received an alert about a shooting at Silver Rail elementary, heard sirens and quickly headed to campus, where he was directed to the church along with other parents. Parents and teachers cried and hugged, and waited.
“The gravity of that room was like nothing else I’ve ever felt before,” he said while standing not far from a memorial outside the school on Friday. “Every parent [there was] in the same boat of, is my child OK, and not knowing for hours.”
Camarlinghi and his wife soon had a tearful reunion with their third grade daughter. Other parents would not.
On Thursday afternoon, Griffin J John II, a 16-year-old former Silver Rail student, climbed over a school fence, fired a gun through a set of locked doors and headed toward a special education classroom. He shot six people, killing a teacher and three children, before a parent fatally shot him, according to police.
The students killed were aged five, eight and 11, and were all in the same classroom. Officials identified the teacher as Megan Lambert, a 25-year-old whose family said she loved her students, and “fought for the underdog” and “those with special needs”.
The violence has devastated the tight-knit central Oregon city of 100,000 people, an area well-known for its outdoor recreation and craft breweries.
Though the school was closed and patrolled by police officers, a make-shift memorial of flowers in front of the campus sign quickly formed. It grew larger by the minute as a steady stream of people arrived all day long, delivering bouquets, balloons, teddy bears, Minnie Mouse stuffed animals and a pumpkin. They wrote messages in chalk: “love always wins” and “fly high Megan”.
Some stopped by for just a moment, while others sat, and parents held their children and cried together. “It’s hard to leave,” one woman remarked as she took in the scene.
Kacy McCarney and her daughter Bayleigh brought half a dozen bouquets of roses and daisies to pay their respects at the school the 12-year-old attended for years. Bayleigh drew hearts in chalk on the sidewalk.
It still feels like Bayleigh’s home, McCarney said, as the family know all the teachers and many students.
“She still has us drive by every time we’re in the area,” McCarney added. Bayleigh, now a middle schooler, learned about what occurred when a classmate received a text message and screamed. She immediately called her mom, asking her about friend after friend she knew at the school. One of them was injured and hospitalized, Kacy McCarney said.
“You see the horrific things that happen outside of your town and it’s horrific and terrifying and so sad. You never think it’s going to happen on the home front to our community, to our babies,” she said.
The steady volume of visitors to the memorial showed the impact the violence has had in the area, but also the deep appreciation people have for Silver Rail. More than one person described the school as a “blessing”, including Camarlinghi, who volunteered at Silver Rail for seven years.
“The teachers, we know them. They’re amazing,” Camarlinghi said, adding that even former educators showed up at the reunification center on Thursday to offer their support. “It’s a tight-knit community, and I just want to say thank you to all of them.”
The memorial was solemn and largely silent with the exception of the sounds of Adagio in G Minor on the cello. David Chinburg drove from a nearby town to play the instrument at the memorial to bring comfort to people. It’s a tradition that originated during the siege of Sarajevo when a cellist played the instrument at a marketplace where 22 people had died.
Chinburg has been playing for more than 60 years, but his bow arm was shaking as he sat in front of the elementary school, he said.
“I just hope it helps to cleanse the grounds, the space, so that people can feel safe going back,” he said. He planned to come back three more days to honor each of the victims.
All around the city, the sadness is palpable, said Fabiola Caseres, who runs a local preschool and came to the memorial to deliver flowers. Many of her former students attend Silver Rail.
“It just feels so heavy,” she said. “Everybody is looking like deer in the headlights. It’s so sad, and you can’t stop thinking about the kids. They’re supposed to come home.”
She’s been comforted by the way people have come together with fundraisers and meal trains. “I’m not surprised. I’m just proud to come from here,” she said.
On Friday evening, people came together again for the second vigil in as many days. Volunteers offered candles, tissues, soup and cookies.
In the downtown space known as Peace Corner, not far from passing tourists and bar goers, hundreds of people stood in silence as they grieved all that had been lost.
