By Brad Brooks
(Reuters) – A Galveston, Texas, jury on Monday found the parents of a teenager who shot and killed 10 classmates at Santa Fe High School in 2018 not liable for the violence, ending an unusual civil trial.
Family members of the shooting victims and survivors accused Antonios Pagourtzis and Rose Kosmetatos of being negligent in allowing their son, Dimitrios, to obtain weapons from their home and for not warning school officials or police about his deteriorating mental state.
“It was their son under their roof with their guns who went and committed this mass shooting,” Clint McGuire, an attorney for some of the plaintiffs, said during closing arguments Friday following three weeks of trial.
The lawsuit, which sought financial damages left to jurors to determine, was filed shortly after the May 18, 2018, Santa Fe High School rampage that also injured 13 people. Among those killed was a 17-year-old Pakistani girl who was an exchange student at the school.
The jury’s decision came four months after the sentencing of two Michigan parents found guilty of manslaughter after a jury found they ignored warning signs before their son shot and killed four classmates at Oxford High School in 2021. Jennifer and James Crumbley are the first parents known to have been charged with manslaughter in a school shooting carried out by one of their children.
In the Texas case, Dimitrios Pagourtzis, who was 17 at the time of the shooting, has been charged with capital murder. He has been deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial and will remain in a treatment facility until a judge declares he is competent.
Lori Laird, an attorney representing Antonios Pagourtzis and Rose Kosmetatos, said before the verdict that holding her clients responsible for their son’s shooting rampage was not justified.
“Regardless of the outcome of this lawsuit, nobody has won,” Laird added.
Experts and gun safety advocates have said holding parents accountable for shootings carried out by children is an important step in reducing school violence. Studies by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security have shown that around 75% of all school shooters obtained their weapons at home.
During the trial and in the lawsuit, plaintiffs attorney McGuire said the parents were liable because they did not properly secure guns inside their home, including the .38 caliber pistol and shotgun their son used in the school shooting.
The lawsuit stated that Dimitrios Pagourtzis was obsessed with the 1999 mass shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado, and that “he took pains to dress like the Columbine shooters – wearing a full-length black trench coat and black combat boots regularly to school, despite the South Texas heat.”
Laird said in an interview that the parents did not know their son was mentally ill and saw no warning signs. Since the shooting, she said, Dimitrios Pagourtzis had been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. Laird said the son’s first “psychotic break” was when he carried out the shooting.
Laird also said the parents’ guns were stored in a gun safe and a locked cabinet.
Last year, Everytown Law, the litigation arm for the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety, announced a settlement between families of victims of the Santa Fe shooting and the online ammunition retailer Luckygunner, where Dimitrios Pagourtzis purchased bullets used in the shooting, despite being too young to do so.
Luckygunner and Dimitrios Pagourtzis also were defendants in the civil case against the parents.
Everytown Law also represented some of the families in the lawsuit against the parents. The group declined to comment ahead of the verdict.
(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Colorado; Editing by Donna Bryson and Daniel Wallis)
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