Video Shows High School Coach Disarm Student With Loaded Shotgun Before Hugging Him

A rifle taken into evidence in the case against Angel Granados-Diaz. Police said the Parkrose High School student was tackled after reportedly bringing a gun into a classroom. Portland Police Bureau via AP

Newly released surveillance video shows a high school football coach disarming a student who was carrying a loaded shotgun.

The pair then embrace.

The footage was captured at Parkrose High School in Oregon in May.

The student, 18-year-old Angel Granados-Diaz, had a mental breakdown and took a shotgun with one shell loaded to school.

Keanon Lowe, the coach, entered a classroom. The student soon followed. Several seconds later, Lowe and the student are back in the hallway and hugging.

Lowe disarms Granados-Diaz and gives the gun to another teacher, who departs as Lowe keeps speaking to the student.

Lowe, who also works as a security guard at Parkrose, said at a press conference shortly after the incident that he saw the student with the gun and quickly lunged at him and took the weapon away before hugging him tightly to keep him where he was.

“I saw the look on his face, the look in his eyes, I looked at the gun, I realized it was a real gun and then my instincts just took over,” Lowe, 27, said.

“I lunged for the gun, put two hands on the gun and he had his two hands on the gun and obviously the students are running out of the classroom.”

Angel Granados-Diaz, 19, a Parkrose High School student accused of bringing shotgun to class, appears in a brief court hearing in Portland, Ore., on May 20, 2019. Dave Killen/The Oregonian via AP, Pool

Lowe said the moments he and Granados-Diaz had together until police arrived were emotional.

“It was emotional for him, it was emotional for me. In that time, I felt compassion for him. A lot of times, especially when you’re young, you don’t realize what you’re doing until it’s over,” Lowe said.

“I told him I was there to save him, I was there for a reason and this was a life worth living.”

Lowe used to work for the San Francisco 49ers, an NFL team.

Keanon Lowe of the San Francisco 49ers NFL football team. Lowe, a former analyst for the 49ers and wide receiver at the University of Oregon, subdued a person with a gun who appeared on a Portland, Oregon high school campus on May 17, 2019. File/AP Photo

Granados-Diaz initially pleaded not guilty.

But on Oct. 10, he pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful possession of a firearm in a public building and one count of unlawful possession of a loaded firearm in public, reported KOIN. The plea deal saw the teenager avoid prison time.

Granados-Diaz was drunk when he went to school that day in May, his attorney Adam Thayne said.

Prosecutors said the teen never pointed the shotgun at anyone but himself and that he made suicidal statements.