HOUSTON, Texas – A jury reached a verdict Monday in the civil trial against the parents of accused Santa Fe High School gunman Dimitrios Pagourtzis.
The jury found Pagourtzis’ parents, Rose Maria Kosmetatos and Antonios Pagourtzis, not liable but did find their son, Dimitrios Pagourtzis liable for the shooting. The online ammo seller Luckygunner was also determined to share some liability. The jury’s verdict assigned 80 percent responsibility to Dimitrios Pagourtzis and 20 percent to Luckygunner.
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“I am overjoyed, I think the parents needed to be vindicated and it needed to happen publicly,” said defense attorney Lori Laird. “Hopefully, they’ll be able to start their next steps forward in their healing as well.”
Seven of the 10 people killed during the 2018 mass shooting, and four of the survivors, sued the Pagourtzis, their son, and Luckygunner. The families argued they turned a blind eye to their son’s declining mental health and were reckless in how they stored guns in the home; citing it was the father’s 12-gauge shotgun and mother’s .38-caliber handgun used in the mass shooting.
Laird said the family did keep their guns locked in a cabinet and safe, and kept the keys hidden in a bedroom closet, but their son found the keys and stole the guns. Laird also said their son kept his burgeoning mental health problems hidden.
“(I am) not trying to take anything away from the pain and the suffering and the terrible things that happened to the plaintiffs, but my clients were also made victims of this event as well,” said Laird.
The jury did award a total of $300 million in damages. However, victims’ families had already settled with Luckygunner before the civil trial, so the online retailer will not be responsible for paying any new damages as a result of this verdict.
The financial burden falls to Dimitrios Pagourtzis who remains hospitalized and incompetent to stand trial in the civil case. An attorney for several of the families of the victims, Clint McGuire, said he feels the verdict still sends a message.
“We respectfully disagree with the outcome. We believe that parents should safely store their guns, we don’t believe that these parents did,” said McGuire. “If we can show that if you don’t safely store your guns if you don’t get your child’s mental health when the red flags are there, then lawyers such as ourselves are going to file a lawsuit, and we are going to put this in front of a jury.”
The foreperson of the jury spoke with reporters following the verdict. He declined to share his name, but said 10 out of the 12 jurors felt the Pagourtzis did take reasonable steps to store their weapons and believed testimony from psychiatrists that those in mental decline can hide their symptoms.
He said two of the jurors did feel the parents could have done more to prevent what happened, but in a civil trial the jury’s verdict on this point did not have to be unanimous.
He also said he felt the mother did try to get her son help when she noticed problems at school; citing email strings from Kosmetatos to teachers and coaches asking what can be done to help her son improve.
The attorney for Dimitrios Pagourtzis’ criminal case, Nicholas Poehl, released a statement on the verdict:
“We are pleased with the jury’s verdict, and that they were able to see through the emotionally-laden but relatively evidence-free case put on by the plaintiffs. The plaintiffs’ decision to concede the mental illness of Dimitrios Pagourtzis, after years of claiming he was faking his illness was certainly interesting, as was their decision not to call the expert witness they’d designated to the stand. The damages verdict against an indigent and hospitalized defendant who was incompetent to stand trial and was only appointed an attorney barely two months prior to trial are decisions that an appeals court will have to address in the future.”
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