Three Children and a Teacher Killed in Bend School Shooting, Police Confirm

Developing story — updated Thursday, October 15, 2026, at 7:17 p.m. PT. Bend Police have now confirmed the death toll and the main facts below at a Thursday evening briefing. This report is being updated as officials release more.

BEND, Ore.

Three children and a teacher were killed in a shooting at Silver Rail Elementary School on Thursday, Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz confirmed at an evening briefing — confirming on the record the toll that law enforcement sources had reported earlier in the day. The children were 5, 8 and 11 years old, Krantz said, and officers found five people dead at the scene, including the shooter. The first call came in at 12:59 p.m. — a report of a shot fired into a car near the school — and within a minute, more callers reported that a person had entered the school and was shooting. Officers were alerted at 1 p.m. and were on scene at 1:02 p.m., after the violence was already over.

Krantz confirmed the shooter was a 16-year-old Bend resident, armed with a long gun, who is believed to have forced entry by shooting at locked doors. Police released no name, and Krantz said investigators do not yet know whether he had any connection to the school, or how far into the building he got. Krantz also settled the question that had been open all afternoon — who fired the fatal shot. A community member who saw the teenager going into the school followed him inside and shot and killed him before officers arrived, Krantz said. Police have not identified that community member. “There are not really any words I can say to any of you that will make this better,” Krantz said at the briefing.

What is confirmed, and what is not

Here is the honest ledger, because on a story like this the distinction is everything. Confirmed by Bend Police at the Thursday evening briefing: three children, ages 5, 8 and 11, and a teacher were killed; the shooter, a 16-year-old Bend resident, is also dead; a community member who followed him into the school fired the fatal shot; and a 7-year-old child and a 54-year-old teacher are at St. Charles Medical Center with critical injuries. Not yet known: the names of any of the victims — police have released none; whether the shooter had any connection to the school; the identity of the community member; and any motive — police have announced none, and this story speculates on none.

Silver Rail Elementary serves kindergarten through fifth grade, with 459 students enrolled last year, according to the Oregon Department of Education, and about 40 staff members. Think about what those numbers mean on an ordinary Thursday: hundreds of small backpacks in cubbies, lunch trays, a pickup line forming in the early afternoon. On this Thursday, the campus was locked down, officers went room by room to evacuate the building, and a large police presence remained around the school into the evening. Police asked the public to avoid the area.

Reunification at Journey Church

For families, the only address that mattered Thursday afternoon was this one: reunification was directed to Journey Church, at 61303 S. Highway 97 in Bend. That is where parents were told to go to be reconnected with their children, and school buses carried students there through the afternoon. If you are a Silver Rail family reading this, go there rather than to the school, which remained an active investigation scene, and rely on official district channels over anything circulating on social media, where early reports in fast-moving incidents are routinely wrong. Bend-La Pine Schools announced that all district schools will be closed on Friday, October 16, with activities and athletic events canceled.

“We are stunned and heartbroken by this senseless tragedy,” Bend-La Pine Schools Superintendent Steven Cook said in a statement, extending the district’s deepest sympathy to the families and to everyone affected by this violence. The district’s immediate priorities, Cook said, are caring for its students and staff and assisting law enforcement and emergency responders.

The FBI is on the scene in Bend assisting local authorities, with agents from the bureau’s Portland office working alongside Bend Police. FBI Director Kash Patel said on X that the bureau will make every resource they need available to the investigation.

Governor Tina Kotek said Thursday that she was closely monitoring the situation in Bend and expressed gratitude to the first responders who rushed to the school. It is the kind of statement governors make because there is, in the first hours, little else a governor can usefully say — the work belongs to the officers, medics and hospital staff on the ground, and to the investigators who will spend the coming days reconstructing a timeline that currently fits inside about three minutes.

A city of 100,000, 175 miles from Portland

Bend is a high-desert city of roughly 100,000 people, about 175 miles southeast of Portland, known nationally for its outdoor life — the Deschutes River, the Cascade views, the ski traffic to Mount Bachelor. It is not a place that expects to lead national news alerts, which is of course true of every place this happens until the day it does. By Thursday afternoon the story was being carried by Reuters and CNN alongside the Statesman Journal's local reporting, and Bend joined the long, grim list of American communities whose elementary schools are now known to strangers for the worst reason.

What happens next: the Thursday evening briefing answered the afternoon’s biggest open questions — the toll, the shooter’s age, and who stopped him. What remains is the investigation itself: how the shooter got the gun and whether he had any tie to the school, the official identification of the victims once families are notified, updates on the two people in critical condition at St. Charles, and the district’s work on counseling and support for students and staff. Each confirmed fact will land here as officials release it.

For now, the confirmed core is this: a call at 12:59 p.m., officers inside by 1:02, and a toll police have now confirmed — three children, ages 5, 8 and 11, and a teacher killed, a 16-year-old shooter stopped by a community member who followed him into the school, and two more people, a 7-year-old and a 54-year-old teacher, in critical condition. This is a developing story, and Previously will update it as Bend Police, the Statesman Journal, Reuters and CNN confirm more — and only as they confirm it. Previously first published this report at 4:04 p.m. PT on Thursday and updated it at 7:17 p.m. PT. More of today's coverage is on the Previously news front, and the day's running wrap is in The 2 O'Clock.