HOUSTON – This story will be updated as more information becomes available during opening statements.
Recommended Videos
Several witnesses were called to the stand Thursday in the civil trial against the parents of Dimitrios Pagourtzis, the gunman accused of killing 10 people in the 2018 Santa Fe High School shooting.
Opening statements wrapped up on Wednesday after a jury of 12, along with two alternates, were seated.
This comes after several family members of those killed and injured during the shooting sued the parents of Pagourtzis.
Their lawsuit claims Antonios Pagourtzis and Rose Marie Kosmetatos should have done more to seek mental health treatments for their son and to ensure he did not have access to firearms.
Antonios and Kosmetatos have denied any wrongdoing.
The civil trial is expected to last three weeks, according to attorneys.
Former Santa Fe High School student Isabelle Laymance was first to take the stand to describe the day of the shooting.
Followed after Laymance’s testimony, Brent Cooley, former Galveston County Sheriff’s Office deputy, took the stand and got into a heated exchange with defense attorney, Lori Laird.
LIVE UPDATES:
5:10 p.m. - The trial has wrapped up for the day and will continue Friday.
4:44 p.m. - Prosecution has finished questioning Barnes, passed to defense attorney for cross examination
- Cross examination begins, Lori Laird, an attorney for Pagourtzis’ parents, asked Barnes about his workman’s comp and payouts he received.
- The question was objected and sustained.
4:04 p.m. - John Barnes, who worked as a resource officer at Santa Fe Independent School District and was shot by suspect, takes stand as witness
RELATED: John Barnes, Santa Fe ISD officer, among those injured in school shooting
- Barnes said he is now a local truck driver because of his arm being injured in the shooting.
- He said he started with the Houston Police Department in patrol, investigations and child sex crimes.
- Barnes said he also worked on the shooting team by investigating officer-involved shooting cases.
- He stated that he had only been on the job as a resource officer at Santa Fe HS for about four months and how he would basically patrol campus.
- Barnes said he remembers seeing the shooter on a previous day, wearing a trench coat. He said he stood out because he was the only one who did in the schools.
- Relating events of the day, Barnes said he had arrived at the school at 7 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. was when the shooting started.
- Barnes said it was a special day the day of the shooting because he was supposed to be apart of a pancake breakfast “Thank you for being here” type of thing.
- He noted his memories were confirmed through the video he has seen since.
- Barnes said his first inkling was when someone said they heard gunfire but stated that he didn’t hear any gunshot at that time.
- When he walked down the hallway, he recalled the fire alarm going off -- but still no indication of a shooter.
- Barnes stated that he could not hear gunshots but he did smell some gunpowder.
- When he got to the end of the hallway, he said heard the shots and then saw two people suffering from gunshot wounds.
- Barnes stated that he got on radio, saying, “I got glass breaking.”
- “What was confusing to me is, I saw two people get hit and then glass breaking,” he recalled on stand. “I said ‘OK, that’s a long gun.’”
- “I wanted to hit him as soon as a shot at him” Barnes said, while explaining his positioning.
- Barnes recalled seeing Glenda Ann Perkins, a popular substitute teacher who was killed at the school, and Flo Rice, another substitute teacher who survived the shooting. He said he watched them both get shot.
- Another plaintiff attorney, Sherry Chandler, asked clarification questions of Barnes.
- “I was trying to get out the most information I could before I got to the corner of the hallway,” Barnes said.
- “As soon as my arm poked around the corner, I got shot in the forearm,” he recalled.
- Barnes said he wasn’t exactly sure where shots were coming from, “I was not thinking about the art classrooms.”
- “I thought I was going to surprise him,” he stated. “It knocked the gun out of my hand and I kept backing up.”
- Barnes started to get emotional as he recalled the following moments: “I didn’t want Gary (partner) to get shot, so I told Gary to leave me.”
- He said Gary then applied a tourniquet to Barnes’ arm.
- Barnes recalled, “The whole side of my body was full of blood.”
- He said other law enforcement officers dragged him by his duty belt to the front entrance of the school while he was in and out of consciousness.
- Barnes recalled yelling, “I said ‘Go get that S-O-B!’”
- He then said, “Get me on a f***ing helicopter, I don’t want to die.”
- Barnes described how his injuries have impacted him years after the shooting: “I cant stand for more than 45 minutes at a time. I can’t mountain bike, run things like that.”
- He stated that he has no information about what the shooters parents did or didn’t do.
RELATED: Six years after mass shooting, wounded Santa Fe ISD police officer still fighting for benefits
- “He was purposely going into classroom to shoot people,” he recalled about Dimitrios.
4:01 p.m. - Trial resumes
- Torres asked Gately about how if there were no ammo or guns, there would be no mass shootings.
- Gately says this is true.
- Cross examinations ends.
3:20 p.m. - Judge calls for break until 3:35 p.m.
- There is a matter that the Judge needs to renew
3:02 p.m. - Roberto Torres, Dimitrios Pagourtzis attorney, is now doing cross examination with witness No. 3, Brian Gately, former deputy at Galveston County Pct. 2
- Torres asked Gatley if preventing school shootings are better than responding to them.
- Gatley replied, “Yes.”
- A back and forth began at 3:10 p.m. between attorneys about questioning the witness on the stand regarding gun laws and if the suspect should have access to a gun.
2:25 p.m. - Witness No. 3, Brian Gately, former deputy at Galveston County Pct. 2, takes the stand
- Gately explained how he heard the call about the shooting and headed to school.
- He said when he first arrived, there was “no sign of people anywhere.”
- Gately said he rallied with two other law enforcement officers. They got together a train of five law enforcement officers and advance down hall -- clearing room by room
- “We were clearing a room when we heard gunshots,” he recalled. “Heard two different calibers of gunfire. We saw a massive amount of blood in the hallway.”
- That’s where Gately described seeing a deceased adult female.
- He continued to detail about advancing looking for shooter.
- When they find him, Gately said he was already cuffed.
- Gately said he was the transport deputy and that Dimitrios was inside his car.
- He said Dimitrios told him, “I know y’all are going to kill me, I don’t want to die.”
- Gately said he asked Dimitrios, “If you have a chance still to do the right thing today, is anyone else at the school in danger, trying to ferret out of there were bombs?”
- He said Dimitrios responded, saying “There were bombs” and officers ultimately found inert devices.
- Cross examiner is decidedly more calm than the last cross examiner, according to investigative reporter Joel Eisenbaum.
- The cross examiner focused on entry time time to make breech and who was actually in charge, stating multiple agencies were converging at once.
- “We weren’t standing around waiting -- we didn’t know how many shooters we had,” Gately stated.
2:23 p.m. - Testimony resumes
- There is lively debate over how Cooley came to be at the school, whether he was dispatched or went voluntarily but it ends there.
- Cooley was dismissed from the stand.
2:08 p.m. - Defense attorney Lori Laird asks, “Is it fair to say you didn’t push forward.”
- Cooley responded, “no, not that simple.”
- “I have to live with that because I didn’t get there faster ... I know, I took charge,” Cooley said.
- Cooley said he did not know who was technically in charge upon arrival. He made the decision to breech.
- Cooley appears lively and defensive as a witness ... admonished again by Judge.
- “I had no idea where the children are,” he responded.
- Cooley relates PTSD hallucinations he had following event. “I lived with this everyday for the last 6 days.”
- Cooley said he takes medication Lexapro.
- Cooley begins to talk about his lawsuit against the county, but the conversation is objected to attorneys approach bench.
2:07 p.m. - Focus is now on what Cooley did when he arrived.
2:05 p.m. - Lively back and forth between Cooley and defense attorney Lori Laird. Judge intervenes and admonishes Cooley to be respectful.
2:03 p.m. - Cooley said he is a security consultant, in college, and an officer for Bayou Vista Police Department currently.
2:02 p.m. Jury seated has been seated and cross examination of Cooley resumes
1:56 p.m. - Trial resumes
1:31 p.m. - Trial has not yet resumed
12:05 p.m. - Lunch break
Witness testimony was paused for lunch and the judge said Cooley’s testimony will reconvene at 1:15 p.m.
12 p.m. - Second witness takes the stand
- Brent Cooley, former Galveston County Sheriff’s Office deputy, took the stand at noon.
Cooley was the sergeant who put the cuffs on Dimitrios after the mass shooting. He filed a lawsuit in March 2022 against the sheriff’s office and the Texas City Independent School District, claiming the two agencies failed to help him deal with trauma following the tragic event.
According to the lawsuit filed on March 23, 2022 Cooley seeks between $200,000 and $5,000,000 in damages.
10:15 a.m. - First witness takes the stand
- First up earlier Thursday, former Santa Fe High School student Isabelle Laymance took the stand as the first witness.
- Laymance testimony was described to be emotional.
- She detailed how she was huddled inside of a closet during the shooting massacre.
- Laymance said she was not seriously injured in the shooting, but how it has had a heavy emotional toll as tears flowed on the stand as she described that day.
- She stated that she did not know or recognize Dimitrios on that day or even after the shooting.
- Laymance said she has had no previous interaction with him.
- She detailed how she heard shots but never saw the shooter, stating the “room smelled smokey from the bullets.”
- Laymance said she called her mother by cellphone and told her there was a shooting happening and that she loved her. She then gave her cellphone to other students to call their parents.
- When Laymance was asked how long she was inside that closet, she responded “probably like forever.”
- She said she heard cellphones ringing in the room outside, at which point the shooter, Dimitrios, asked if anyone wanted to come out and answer the phones.
- Laymance said she called the police three times, begging officers to hurry and gave the exact location of where they were in the back of the school.
- She said she was very good friends with Kyle McLeod, who “lit up the room every time he entered.”
- Laymance stated that when the shooter was in custody, she was walked out by police in a single file line, hands up and saw “chaos” outside.
- She described seeing more bodies, including her own cousin.
- Laymance said she was checked out for injuries and taken by a school bus driven by Rhonda Hart, whose own daughter was killed in the shooting. She said she was not allowed to talk about the conversation she had with Rhonda.
- Laymance stated that she suffers from PTSD and depression from that day.
- She described how she went home and had messages from several reporters wanting to interview her. She gave an interview after changing clothes that she had blood on.
- During a question examination, Laymance was asked if she did appear in a documentary about the shooting, where she confirmed.
Criminal case in shooting
The criminal case against Pagourtzis remains at a standstill because he remains incompetent to stand trial. Doctors at North Texas State Hospital in Vernon have been working to restore his competency since 2019.
