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A Texas jury found the parents of school shooter Dimitrios Pagourtzis not liable on Monday for allowing their mentally ill son access to their firearms, knowing all the while he was beset by violent tendencies.
Pagourtzis was himself found liable for the deadly shooting; online ammunition retailer Luckygunner was found partially liable. The jury had begun deliberations on Friday afternoon.
On May 18, 2018, Pagourtzis, then 17, shot and killed eight students and two teachers at Santa Fe High School, near Houston. He wounded 13 more during the rampage. Now 23, Pagourtzis was charged with capital murder but has been in custody at a state hospital since November 2019 after being found incompetent to stand trial.
In the meantime, relatives of the deceased and injured filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Antonios Pagourtzis and Rose Marie Kosmetatos, Pagourtzis’ mother and father, as well as Pagourtzis himself, to pursue some modicum of accountability while the criminal case is on hold.
The elder Pagourtzis and Kosmetatos “refused to accept any responsibility,” plaintiffs’ attorney Clint McGuire said during closing arguments last Friday, reminding jurors that it was “their son under their roof with their guns who went and committed this mass shooting.”
To demonstrate, McGuire displayed the T-shirt that Pagourtzis wore while carrying out the massacre, which read: “Born to Kill.”
He recited passages Pagourtizs had written in his journal: "What I do will both have an immeasurable impact and be incredibly miniscule. I will have destroyed bloodlines spanning thousands of years.”
Dimitrios Pagourtzis’ attorney, Roberto Torres, said during his closing arguments that his client did something monstrous, but was not a monster. He described him as “severely mentally disturbed,” enduring the “mother of all psychotic hurricanes” when he committed the mass shooting.
“Let’s blame the sick guy,” Torres said.
Attorney Lori Laird, who represents Pagourtzis’ parents, said neither of them had any inkling their son was planning such a heinous act. The two “didn’t pull the trigger,” their teenage son did, she told the jury.
Earlier this year, the parents of Michigan school shooter Ethan Crumbley were convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to a minimum of 10 years for buying their son the gun he used to kill four students at Oxford High School in November 2021, and ignoring red flags about his mental health along the way.
McGuire appealed to the jury for accountability, telling them their decision would reverberate with schoolkids across the nation. There’s no possible way Pagourtzis’ parents were unaware of their son’s spiraling mental health, as his hygiene deteriorated, he began failing classes, and started skipping school, he said. (Neither parent is accused of a crime.)
“Dimitrios did this because he was filled with rage,” McGuire said. “... He wrote about hating how he was treated, how he was treated by the opposite sex. He was angry.”
The last witness to take the stand before jury deliberations was a psychiatrist specializing in childhood disorders, who interviewed Pagourtzis in 2019. He said Pagourtzis suffered from severe psychosis and believed his mind was being controlled by the CIA. But Pagourtzis did not tell anyone about his delusions, which also included a demigod named Natasha, for fear they would think he was making it up.
As defense lawyer Alton Todd told the jury on Friday: “Who was in the best position to make sure this didn’t happen? Who should have known Dimitrios best? His parents. If you don’t look, you won’t see.”
