Texas jury to decide whether parents of student are guilty of deadly school shooting

DALLAS (AP) — A lawyer for the parents of a Texas student accused of killing 10 people in a 2018 school shooting near Houston told jurors at the trial Friday that they had no idea their son would have a psychotic breakdown. Victims’ lawyers say Dimitrios Pagourtzis gave his parents many signs that he needed help.

The victims’ lawsuit seeks to hold Pagourtzis and his parents, Antonios Pagourtzis and Rose Marie Kosmetatos, financially responsible for the shooting at Santa Fe High School on May 18, 2018. They are seeking at least $1 million in damages.

The jury received the case just before 5 p.m. and was due to resume deliberations Monday morning.

Advocates for the victims say the parents did not provide the necessary mental health support for their son and did not do enough to prevent him from accessing their guns.

“It was their son, under their roof, with their guns who went and committed this mass shooting,” Clint McGuire, representing some of the victims, told jurors during closing statements in a Galveston courtroom.

Authorities say Pagourtzis fatally shot eight students and two teachers. He was 17 years old then.

Pagourtzis, now 23, has been charged with murder, but the criminal case has been stayed since November 2019, when he was declared incompetent to stand trial. He is being held in a state mental health facility.

Lori Laird, an attorney for Pagourtzis’ parents, said their son’s mental breakdown was not predictable and that he hid plans for the shooting from them. She also said the parents kept their firearms locked up.

“The parents didn’t pull the trigger, the parents didn’t give him a gun,” Laird said.

In April, Jennifer and James Crumbley were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison by a Michigan judge after becoming the first parents convicted in a mass school shooting in the US. Pagourtzis’ parents are not charged with any crime.

Lawyers representing victims’ families spoke of the anguish caused by the death of a loved one, including the family of Sabika Aziz Sheikh, a 17-year-old Pakistani student who wanted to become a diplomat.

The lawsuit was filed by relatives of seven of the people killed and four of the 13 who were injured in the Santa Fe attack. Attorneys representing some of the survivors spoke of the trauma they still endure, including Chase Yarbrough, who still has bullets embedded in his body.

Representing Pagourtzis, attorney Roberto Torres told jurors during the trial that while his client planned the shooting, he was never in control of his actions because of his severe mental illness. During his closing statements, he said Pagourtzis’ parents should have paid more attention.

Pagourtzis “did a monstrous thing, but he’s not a monster,” Torres said.

“You can’t scapegoat him here,” he said.

McGuire asked jurors to convict Pagourtzis, saying there was enough evidence he intended to do what he did. McGuire said Pagourtzis had meticulously planned the shooting, opening fire in the art room where the students would be trapped, and that police would have a hard time getting to him. He said Pagourtzis wrote in his diary that the idea of ​​shooting his classmates and watching them “spin on the ground in agony” was “exciting”.

McGuire said during closing statements that they believe Pagourtzis was very depressed, but that he carried out the shooting because he was full of anger.

“He knew when he went to school that what he was doing was wrong,” McGuire said.

McGuire also said Pagourtzis logged more than 50 absences from school, showered infrequently, became quieter and stayed in his room — all signs of mental illness his parents should have recognized.

Laird said during closing statements that school records showed parents were not notified of most of his absences. She showed recent family photos of the smiling teenager and described his willing participation in a Greek dance performance just before the shooting.

She told jurors during the trial that the couple saw no red flags, knew nothing about his online purchases and did not know any of their guns were missing.

Lucky Gunner, an online retailer in Tennessee that sold Dimitrios Pagourtzis more than 100 rounds of ammunition without verifying his age, was a defendant in the lawsuit until last year, when it reached a settlement with the families.

Kosmetatos told jurors that while her son had become more introverted, he was a bright and normal child with no significant problems. She admitted he “wasn’t himself” in the months leading up to the shooting, but she had hoped he would pull through.

Antonios Pagourtzis testified that he did not know that his son felt rejected and ostracized at school or that he might have been depressed.

The family locked their firearms in a gun safe in the garage and in a display case in the living room. Dimitrios Pagourtzis used his mother’s .38 handgun and one of his father’s rifles during the shooting. Whether he took the guns from the safe or the closet and where he found the keys were points of contention during the trial.

“You can’t guarantee anything 100%,” said Antonios Pagourtzis.

Similar lawsuits have been filed following other mass shootings.

In 2022, a jury awarded more than $200 million to the mother of one of the four people killed in a shooting at a Waffle House in Nashville, Tennessee. The lawsuit was filed against the shooter and his father, who was accused of returning a rifle to his son before the shooting, despite the son’s mental health issues.

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