Texas jury to decide if student's parents are liable in a deadly 2018 school shooting

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 liable for damages.

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

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.