Parents of Texas school shooter found not liable in 2018 rampage that left 10 dead
The parents of a former student who killed 10 people and wounded several others when he opened fire in Texas at Santa Fe High School in 2018 are not responsible for their son's actions, a jury found on Monday.
Survivors and family members of the shooting victims accused the parents, Antonios Pagourtzis and Rose Marie Kosmetatos, of being negligent in storing their weapons and ignoring signs he would commit a violent act during the three-week civil trial.
The jury instead found the couple's son, Dimitrios Pagourtzis, and Lucky Gunner, an online retailer from which the shooter purchased the ammunition used in the shooting, liable and awarded $330 million in damages.
In a statement, Jake Felde, Lucky Gunner's CEO, said that his company "isn't responsible for paying any monetary damages awarded by the jury" as it already reached a separate settlement last year and was not a party to the Texas trial.
On the morning of May 18, 2018, authorities said then-17-year-old Dimitrios Pagourtzis killed eight students and two teachers and wounded 13 others. Pagourtzis was charged with capital murder but was found incompetent to stand trial. He was also a defendant in the civil case but did not appear in court.
The civil trial comes at a critical time as the nation grapples with gun violence. More parents and other adults are starting to be held accountable for overlooking the red flags of their children and students that led to mass shootings.
In Virginia, an assistant principal was charged with child abuse after failing to intervene before a 6-year-old shot his first-grade teacher. In Michigan, a couple was sentenced to a decade in prison for failing to stop their 15-year-old son from gunning down four high-school classmates.
And in Illinois, a father pleaded guilty to reckless misconduct after his son killed seven people at a Fourth of July parade.
Lawsuit claimed shooter's parents were negligent
The lawsuit, filed in 2018, was brought by families of the Santa Fe High School shooting victims and sought over $1 million in damages. The families claimed in the suit that the shooter's parents "knew that their son was at risk of harming himself or others but still irresponsibly and negligently stored their firearms, so that their son could access them," according to court documents viewed by USA TODAY.
According to the lawsuit, the shooter exhibited warning signs and had violent fantasies in advance of the shooting. He was fascinated by the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, deliberately dressed like the Columbine shooters and posted images of guns and other weapons on his social media.
His parents, the suit said, knew something was wrong with their son and still stored their weapons negligently. The teen was showing signs of depression and isolating himself, said Clint McGuire, the attorney representing the families of victims, the Associated Press reported.
“In spite of the fact he was trying to give them signs, if they did not know he was depressed as they’re claiming, it’s because they failed in their job as parents,” McGuire said. Kosmetatos cried at the defense table as McGuire spoke to jurors, AP reported.
Defense attorneys for Antonios Pagourtzis and Kosmetatos during trial said their son was "sneaky" in removing the family's guns from their cabinet and gun safe without his parents knowing, and said they had no warning signs of what he was going to do. The defense also placed some of the blame on Lucky Gunner.
"Dimitrios was deeply disturbed. Dimitrios did not tell anybody. He was not aggressive. He did not act out,” defense attorney Lori Laird told jurors, according to Houston Public Media.
The shooter's mother, Kosmetatos, told jurors that she wished her son had killed her instead of his classmates, ABC 13 News reported.
"He wasn't raised to do anything like that," Kosmetatos said. "If I had known my son had any capacity or inkling of doing anything like that, I would have personally gotten in front of him."
The lawsuit also previously named Lucky Gunner as a defendant and claimed the shooter did not need to present age verification in order to buy the bullets. Lucky Gunner was ultimately denied an appeal to the Texas Supreme Court, arguing that it should have immunity under federal law, and the case was settled last year in private.
Jurors heard testimony from families of victims, survivors
During the trial, parents and other family members of those killed in the shooting said they held the shooter responsible, and that his parents bore responsibility for the lack of attentiveness. Survivors of the shooting also testified.
“They’re seeing the signs and the symptoms of their son, I don’t want to say deteriorating, but not being the normal kid that he is. I can say, if that was my parents, they’d be asking are you OK, what’s going on, how are you, let’s talk," said Trenton Beazley, a survivor who was 15 at the time of the shooting, according to KHOU.
Sabika Aziz Sheikh was a 17-year-old exchange student from Pakistan who was killed in the shooting. Her mother, Farah Naz, said in court that she and her family saw there was a school shooting in Texas on the news, and tried to call their daughter, who didn't answer. They immediately feared the worst, and later learned she had been killed.
“She was my oldest child, she was my friend, she had a lot of dreams, not a day passes I don’t miss her. Whenever I think about my other children’s dreams I just think about her,” Naz said, KPRC-TV reported.
Flo Rice, who was a substitute teacher the day of the shooting, was shot six times and survived. She said she had to relearn to walk after the shooting, KTRK reported.
“I realized someone was hunting me like an animal," Rice said of her experience during the shooting, according to KPRC-TV. “I am not the same person I was before. Can’t tolerate loud noises, or busy places, crowds, always looking for exits, can’t have back to the door, memory issues."
Trial came after Michigan parents sentenced to prison time for son's shooting
While the Texas parents were never charged with crimes, the trial bears resemblance to another case that ended with two Michigan parents sentenced to at least a decade each in prison for a mass shooting committed by their son.
Jennifer and James Crumbley were both convicted of involuntary manslaughter earlier this year after prosecutors said they ignored troubling signs that their 15-year-old son was struggling with mental illness and bought him the gun he used to kill four classmates in 2021.
Legal experts told USA TODAY the Crumbley case, which drew national attention, could influence how society views parents' culpability when their children access guns and cause harm with them.
Contributing: Thao Nguyen, USA TODAY; Reuters