Shauntai Nickerson broke her silence the day after her son killed four people at his former elementary school.
Nickerson, whose 16-year-old son Griffin J. John II carried out the deadly attack at Silver Rail Elementary in Bend, Oregon, last Thursday, spoke briefly to reporters gathered in the coastal town where she had raised him. “I’m sorry … I miss him,” she said. She insisted he was “a good boy, he really was,” though she declined to explain how he obtained the shotgun registered in her name. “If I could have prevented this, I would have,” she added.
The weapon became central to the bloodshed that left three children and a teacher dead. Police say John II used Nickerson’s shotgun to blast through the door at the school, then targeted his former special education classroom. The victims included 5-year-old Rhoam Summer, an 8-year-old, an 11-year-old, and teacher Megan Lambert, 25. A 7-year-old in a wheelchair suffered a gunshot wound to the face and was hospitalized, while a 54-year-old teacher also sustained injuries. John II was killed by an armed parent who confronted him inside the building.
The violence that defined the teenager’s final months echoed a pattern established before he was born. Court documents obtained by The Post reveal that his father, Griffin John, had a documented history of domestic abuse and alcoholism. The elder John beat Nickerson and threatened her with a knife during her pregnancy, forcing her to flee across Oregon to escape him.
The senior Griffin John later served prison time for attacking Nickerson, receiving a 48-month sentence. He petitioned a judge to lift a restraining order against him, writing that he wanted to “see his son grow up” in Newport, the coastal community where the family had roots. His early release came through, but freedom proved temporary. Within months of his son’s birth, Nickerson relocated with the infant roughly three hours east to Bend, severing the coastal connection.
The elder John’s troubles with the law persisted after his release. In 2012, Newport police arrested him for allegedly head-butting an officer while violating parole conditions that prohibited drinking and marijuana use, according to court documents. The outcome of that case remains unclear.
His conduct in the community drew notice beyond police encounters. A bartender in neighboring Toledo, where the Nickerson family was known, claimed the elder John had made inappropriate comments to a teenage girl.
Both the John and Nickerson families carry rough reputations in their eastern Oregon hometown, and numerous relatives refused to discuss the shooting with reporters. One family member threatened a journalist with dogs when approached for comment. Neither John II nor Nickerson could be reached in the immediate aftermath beyond her brief statement to the press.
The trajectory from Newport to Bend shaped the shooter’s fractured upbringing. Born eight months after his father’s release, Griffin J. John II spent his earliest months on the coast before Nickerson moved him inland. The relocation placed him in the community where he would eventually enroll in special education classes at Silver Rail Elementary — the same classroom he returned to with a shotgun last Thursday.
The elder John’s own letters to the court acknowledged his struggles. He admitted to a history of alcohol abuse and noted he had been incarcerated “several times in the past.” His attempt to reunite with his family through legal channels ultimately failed, and the son he had begged to watch grow up became the perpetrator of one of Oregon’s deadliest school shootings.
