GALVESTON, Texas — Jurors in Texas are expected to resume deliberations Monday on whether the parents of a Texas student accused of killing 10 people in a 2018 school shooting near houston should be held financially responsible for damages.
The victims’ trial trying to keep Dimitrios 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 victims’ attorneys say the parents failed to provide necessary support for their son’s 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 went and committed this mass shooting,” Clint McGuire, who represented some of the victims, told the jury during closing statements in a Galveston courtroom.
say the authorities Pagourtzis fatally shot eight students and two teachers. He was then 17 years old.
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 be brought to justice. He is being held in a state mental institution.
Lori Laird, an attorney for Pagourtzis’ parents, said their son’s mental breakdown was not predictable and that he hid his 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 to be convicted in a US school shooting. Pagourtzis’ parents are not charged with any crime.
The trial was filed by relatives of seven of those killed and four of the 13 injured in the Santa Fe attack. Lawyers representing some of the survivors spoke of the trauma they still endure.