GALVESTON, Texas — The parents of a former student accused of killing 10 people in a 2018 school shooting near Houston cannot be held responsible for what happened, a jury ruled Monday.
The victims’ lawsuit sought to hold 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. The lawsuit alleged the parents failed to provide their son with adequate mental health support and did not do enough to prevent him from accessing their guns.
Jurors, however, held Pagourtzis liable and awarded the families more than $300 million in damages, including for pain and mental anguish.
Authorities say Pagourtzis shot and killed eight students and two teachers. Pagourtzis, now 23, was charged with capital murder, but the criminal case has been on hold since November 2019, when he was declared unfit to stand trial. He is being held in a state psychiatric facility.
“We need to protect our children. They need to feel safe going to school,” Galveston County Court Judge Jack Ewing said after the verdict was delivered. “They need to feel safe at home. And that message will be heard even beyond the walls and doors of this courthouse. And I hope it reaches the ears of our legislators.”
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. school shooting. Pagourtzis’ parents are not charged with any crime.
The complaint was filed by relatives of seven of those killed and four of the 13 injured in the Santa Fe attack.
The attorney representing Pagourtzis told jurors that while his client planned the shooting, he never had control over his actions because of his severe mental illness.
Attorney Clint McGuire, who represents some of the victims, said the parents knew their son was depressed, getting bad grades, isolating himself and had taken guns from their gun cabinet and safe. McGuire said Pagourtzis also wrote disturbing Facebook posts and ordered ammunition and other items online, such as a knife with a Nazi symbol and a T-shirt that read “Born To Kill.”
But Lori Laird, an attorney for Pagourtzis’ parents, told jurors that the couple saw no red flags, knew nothing about their online purchases and had no idea that any of their guns were missing.
Both parents testified at trial. Antonios Pagourtzis is retired but worked for years in ship maintenance and repair. Kosmetatos works as an executive assistant at a university health sciences center in Galveston.
Kosmetatos told jurors that while her son became more introverted as he grew older, he was a smart, normal child with no major problems. She acknowledged that he “wasn’t himself” in the months leading up to the shooting, but she hoped that would pass.
Antonios Pagourtzis testified that he was not aware that his son felt rejected and ostracized at school, or that he was perhaps depressed.
The family stored guns in a safe in the garage and in 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 got the guns from the safe or the cabinet and where he got the keys were among the issues debated during the trial.
“You can’t guarantee anything 100 percent,” Pagourtzis said.
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.
Similar lawsuits have been filed following other mass shootings.
In 2022, a jury awarded more than $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 is accused of giving his son a rifle before the shooting despite his son’s mental health issues.
