Texas jurors are deciding if a student’s parents are liable in a deadly 2018 school shooting

DALLAS — An attorney for the parents of a Texas student accused of 10 people dead in a 2018 school shooting near Houston told jurors Friday they didn’t know their son was going to have a psychotic break. Lawyers for the victims say Dimitrios Pagourtzis gave his parents plenty of signals that he needed help.

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

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

Lawyers for the victims say the parents failed to provide their son with the support he needed for his mental health and did not do enough to prevent him from accessing their guns.

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

Authorities say Pagourtzis fatally shot eight students and two teachersHe was 17 years old at the time.

Pagourtzis, now 23, has been charged with first-degree murder, but the criminal case has been stalled since November 2019, when he declared incompetent to stand trial. He is being held in a state mental institution.

Lori Laird, an attorney for Pagourtzis’ parents, said their son’s mental breakdown was unforeseeable and that he hid his plans for the shooting from them. She also said the parents kept their guns locked away.

“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 to be convicted of a mass shooting at a U.S. school. Pagourtzis’ parents have not been charged with a crime.

Lawyers representing the victims’ families spoke of the pain of the deaths of their loved ones, including the family of Sabika Aziz Sheikha 17-year-old Pakistani exchange student who wanted to become a diplomat.

The lawsuit was filed by families of seven of the people killed and four of the 13 wounded in the Santa Fe attack. Attorneys representing some of the survivors spoke of the trauma they are still enduring, including Chase Yarbrough, who still has bullet holes in his body.

Attorney Roberto Torres, who represented Pagourtzis, 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 been more vigilant.

Pagourtzis “did something monstrous, but he is not a monster,” Torres said.

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

McGuire asked jurors to hold Pagourtzis accountable, saying there was ample evidence he planned to do what he did. McGuire said Pagourtzis planned the shooting meticulously, opening fire in the art room where students would be trapped and it would be difficult for police to reach him. He said Pagourtzis wrote in his diary that the idea of ​​shooting his classmates and watching them “writhe on the floor in pain” was “exhilarating.”

McGuire said during closing statements that he believes Pagourtzis was very depressed, but that he committed the shooting because he was filled with anger.

“When he went to school, he knew what he was doing was wrong,” McGuire said.

McGuire also said Pagourtzis was absent from school more than 50 times, rarely showered, became quieter and stayed in his room, all indicators of a mental illness that 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 teen and described his willing participation in a Greek dance recital just before the shooting.

She told jurors during the trial that the couple saw no warning signs, knew nothing about his online purchases and were unaware their guns were missing.

Lucky Gunner, a Tennessee-based online retailer who sold Dimitrios Pagourtzis over 100 rounds of ammunition without verifying his age, was a defendant in the lawsuit until last year, when it a settlement has been reached with the families.

Kosmetatos told the jury that while her son had become more introverted, he was a smart, normal child with no significant problems. She acknowledged that he was “not himself” in the months leading up to the shooting, but she had hoped it would pass.

Antonios Pagourtzis testified that he was not aware that his son felt rejected and excluded at school, or that he might be depressed.

The family kept their firearms in a gun safe in the garage and a display case in the living room. Dimitrios Pagourtzis used his mother’s .38 caliber pistol and one of his father’s shotguns in the shooting. Whether he removed the weapons from the safe or the cabinet, and where he found the keys, were issues in dispute during the trial.

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

Similar lawsuits have been filed after 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 gun to his son before the shooting, despite the son’s mental health problems.