o'

As he got closer to the building, Giamanco said, he lay on his stomach and used his elbows to crawl across the ground.

 That's when I started hearing children pleading for their lives,  he said.  And then I started hearing gunfire and I just started army crawling faster and faster. And I told myself: 'This is probably the last thing that I'm ever going to do.' 

Giamanco said he entered the school through a window that had been shot out. Peeking into a nearby classroom, he saw a teacher grappling with the shooter. He said he faced them both in profile, giving him an open shot.

 I felt like I was the last line of defense between him and the rest of the children,  Giamanco said.

He swung the door open, stepped into the room and fired his gun.

Both the gunman and the teacher dropped to the floor. The teacher bolted from the room as the shooter reached for his shotgun.

 He was scrambling for his weapon,  Giamanco said.  I looked at him and I shot him two more times to make sure that he couldn't move, because I was afraid of him shooting anybody else. 

'I was supposed to be there'

Police have said Giamanco was carrying his gun legally in his truck and have credited him and the unarmed teacher who confronted the gunman with saving lives. A day after the shootings, President Donald Trump said that Giamanco was a  great hero  who  took care of business. 

A second teacher in the classroom, Becky Drury, said in a statement Wednesday that she lay on the floor, helplessly playing dead, after being struck at close range by a shotgun blast that nearly severed her left hand.

The teacher who struggled with the shooter hasn't been publicly identified. Giamanco told the public broadcaster that she's  a real true hero  whose actions gave him an opening to kill the attacker.

 I can't tell you what it feels like to take a life … but I can tell you that I genuinely feel like I was supposed to be there,  Giamanco said.  If I wasn't there, I just don't know what would have happened. 

___

Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia.