An attorney for the parents of a Texas student accused of a 2018 school shooting near Houston told trial jurors that they didn’t know their son would have a psychotic breakdown. The victims’ lawsuit seeks to hold the student, Dimitrios Pagourtzis, and his parents financially liable for the shooting at Santa Fe High School in 2018. Pagourtzis, now 23, has been charged with capital murder but was declared incompetent to stand trial in 2019. The lawsuit seeks at least $1 million in damages and alleges that 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.
Lori Laird, an attorney for Pagourtzis’ parents, argued that their son’s mental break wasn’t foreseeable and that he hid his plans for the shooting from them. She also mentioned that the parents kept their firearms locked up and were not involved in any criminal activity. Attorneys representing the victims’ families talked about the anguish of their loved one’s deaths, including the family of Sabika Aziz Sheikh, a 17-year-old Pakistani exchange student who was killed in the shooting. 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 described the ongoing trauma they experienced, including having bullets still embedded in their bodies.
Representing Pagourtzis, attorney Roberto Torres argued that while his client planned the shooting, he was not in control of his actions due to severe mental illness. Torres suggested that Pagourtzis’ parents should have been paying closer attention to his mental health. On the other hand, Clint McGuire, representing some of the victims, urged jurors to hold Pagourtzis accountable, stating that there was ample evidence that he intended to carry out the shooting. McGuire mentioned that Pagourtzis meticulously planned the shooting and even wrote in his journal about his exhilaration at the idea of shooting his classmates and watching them suffer.
The family of Dimitrios Pagourtzis mentioned that he had become more introverted in the months leading up to the shooting but was a bright and normal child with no significant issues. The family claimed they were not aware of any red flags or his online purchases. Kosmetatos, Pagourtzis’ mother, acknowledged that her son wasn’t himself before the shooting, but she had hoped it was just a phase. The family had secured their firearms in a gun safe and a display cabinet, but it was debated during the trial how Pagourtzis accessed the weapons. Similar lawsuits have been filed following other mass shootings, with a recent case in Nashville where a jury awarded over $200 million to the mother of a victim killed at a Waffle House in 2022.
