Victims’ attorneys ask jurors to find student’s parents liable in a deadly 2018 school shooting

DALLAS (AP) — An attorney for the parents of a Texas student accused of killing 10 people in a 2018 school shooting told jurors Friday in a trial seeking to hold them accountable that they didn’t know he would have a psychotic breakdown. Attorneys for the victims say their son gave them many signs that he needed help.

The victims’ civil lawsuit seeks to hold Dimitrios 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 pursuing at least $1 million in damages.

Victims’ attorneys say the parents failed to provide necessary support for their son’s mental health and didn’t 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 the Galveston courtroom.

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

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

Lori Laird, an attorney for Pagourtzis’ parents, said their son’s mental break wasn’t foreseeable and that he hid his plans for the shooting from his parents. She also said the parents kept their firearms locked up.

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

Attorneys representing the victims’ families talked of the anguish of their loved one’s deaths, including the family of Sabika Aziz Sheikh, a 17-year-old Pakistani exchange student who wanted to be a diplomat.

The lawsuit was filed by relatives of seven of the people killed and four of the 13 who were wounded in the Santa Fe attack. Attorneys representing some of the survivors talked about the trauma they still endure, including Chase Yarbrough, who has fragments of 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 statement he said Pagourtzis’ parents should have been paying closer attention to their son, who “did a monstrous thing, but he’s not a monster.”

“You can’t make him the scapegoat here,” Torres said.

McGuire asked jurors to hold Pagourtzis accountable, saying there is ample evidence that he intended to do what he did. McGuire said Pagourtzis meticulously planned the shooting, opening fire in the art room so that students would be trapped and it would be hard for police to reach him. He said Pagourtzis wrote in his journal that he found the idea of shooting his classmates “exhilarating” and watching them “writhe on the ground in agony.”

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

McGuire also said Pagourtzis recorded had over 50 absences from school, rarely showered, became quieter and stayed in his room — all indicators of mental illness that his parents should have recognized.

Laird told jurors during the trial that the couple hadn’t seen any red flags, knew nothing of his online purchases and didn’t know any of their weapons were missing. She said during closing statements that the school record showed the parents weren’t notified of most of his absences. She showed recent family photos featuring the smiling teen and described his willing participation in a Greek dancing performance just before the shooting.

Lucky Gunner, a Tennessee-based online retailer 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 became more introverted as he grew older, he was a bright and normal child with no significant issues. She acknowledged that he “wasn’t himself” in the months leading up to the shooting but she had hoped it would pass.

Antonios Pagourtzis testified that he wasn’t aware that his son was feeling rejected and ostracized at school, or that he might have been depressed.

The family stored firearms in a gun safe in the garage and a display cabinet in the living room. Dimitrios Pagourtzis used his mother’s .38 caliber handgun and one of his father’s shotguns during the shooting. Whether he got the weapons from the safe or cabinet, and where he found the keys, were among points debated during the trial.

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

Similar lawsuits have been filed following other mass shootings.

In 2022, a jury awarded over $200 million to the mother of one of 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.

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 U.S. mass school shooting. Pagourtzis’ parents are not accused of any crime.