Jury deliberations continue in Santa Fe civil case against parents of accused shooter Dimitrios Pagourtzis

HOUSTON, Texas – Deliberations will continue Monday in the civil case against the parents of accused Santa Fe High School shooter Dimitrios Pagourtzis.

The victims' lawsuit seeks to hold Dimitrios Pagourtzis and his parents, Antonios Pagourtzis and Rose Marie Kosmetatos, financially liable for the shooting at Santa Fe High School on May 18, 2018. They are demanding at least one million dollars in damages.

The victims' lawyers say the parents failed to provide necessary mental health support for their son and did not do enough to prevent him from accessing their weapons.

“It was their son, under their roof, with their guns, who went out and committed this mass murder,” Clint McGuire, who represented some of the victims, told jurors in his closing argument in the Galveston courtroom.

According to authorities, Pagourtzis, at the age of 17, shot and killed eight students and two teachers.

Pagourtzis, now 23, was charged with capital crimes, but the criminal case has been on hold since November 2019, when he was declared incompetent to stand trial. He is being held in a state psychiatric hospital.

Lori Laird, an attorney for Pagourtzis' parents, said her son's mental breakdown was not foreseeable and that he had kept his plans for the shooting secret from them. She also said the parents had locked away their firearms.

“The parents didn't pull the trigger, the parents didn't give him a gun,” Laird said.

During the three-week trial, Pagourtzis' parents and siblings denied any wrongdoing or knowledge of Dimitrios' mental state before the shooting, often describing his altered behavior as normal for a teenager. The family was questioned extensively about the 17 guns kept in the family home and used during the mass attack and how accessible they were. Both Rose and Antonios denied the guns were accessible, saying the cabinet where they were kept was kept locked and checked often.

Some of the most poignant moments during the trial included testimony from Dimitrios' parents and siblings, survivors of the shooting and the psychiatrist who interviewed Dimitrios and his family in 2019 and wrote the report that has been central to the case over the past week and a half.

The last person to testify during the trial was Dr. Bradley Peterson, a psychiatrist and expert in childhood illnesses. His testimony focused on Dimitrios' mental state. Peterson was hired by the defense and conducted interviews with Dimitrios and his family in 2019. He diagnosed Dimitrios with schizoaffective disorder and noted severe psychosis and delusions involving a demigod named Natasha and the CIA's MK-Ultra program. Peterson emphasized that Dimitrios' mental disorders, including paranoia and a thought disorder, significantly influenced his actions during the 2018 school massacre.

Peterson emphasized that Dimitrios' family was unaware of the severity of his condition and confused his symptoms with normal behavior. He stressed that Dimitrios' delusions made it difficult for him to distinguish between reality and fantasy, which impaired his ability to distinguish between right and wrong. The psychiatrist defended the validity of Dimitrios' symptoms, claiming they were consistent with his diagnosis and difficult to fabricate.

The lawsuit was filed by the relatives of seven of the people killed and four of the 13 injured in the attack in Santa Fe.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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