Parents of Texas high school shooter found not liable for negligence in civil trial

By Andy Rose, CNN

(CNN) — A Texas jury found the parents of a school shooter not liable for negligence on Monday in a civil trial brought in connection with the 2018 shooting at Santa Fe High School.

However, the jury found gunman Dimitrios Pagourtzis liable and awarded the plaintiffs more than $300 million.

Dimitrios Pagourtzis killed eight children and two adults and wounded over a dozen others at the high school near Galveston in May 2018, when he was 17 years old, authorities said.

Survivors and family members of some of those who were gunned down had sued Pagourtzis’ parents, Antonios Pagourtzis and Rose Marie Kosmetatos, accusing them of failing to properly secure the family’s firearms and failing to act on their son’s declining mental state leading up to the shooting.

“Parents of a depressed child should safely store their guns,” plaintiffs’ attorney Clint McGuire said in opening statements. “If they don’t, and their child commits a school shooting with them, the parents share in the responsibility for those harms and losses.”

The parents testified they didn’t see any warning signs ahead of the shooting, and their attorney argued they could not be held liable for the son’s actions.

An attorney for Dimitrios Pagourtzis’ parents said Monday she was overjoyed by the jury’s decision.

“I think the parents needed to be vindicated and (it) needed to happen publicly,” the attorney, Lori Laird, said Monday evening.

McGuire told reporters Monday evening that he respectfully disagreed with the jury’s decision. Parents, he said, play a key role in preventing school shootings.

“We would have liked to (have) had the parents share in their responsibility for this. … Parents should know their kids better than anyone else, and they should be all of our first lines of defense,” McGuire said.

Laird, in her closing argument, had placed blame on Lucky Gunner, a Tennessee-based online retailer that sold Dimitrios Pagourtzis more than 100 rounds of ammunition without verifying he was old enough to buy it. Lucky Gunner was a defendant in the lawsuit until last year, when it reached a settlement with the families, the Associated Press reported.

On Monday, the jury said that of the conduct that led to the shootings, 80% was attributable to Dimitrios Pagourtzis and 20% was attributable to Lucky Gunner.

McGuire said the previous settlement was financially final, but the finding of liability was crucial. “The important thing from … the jury today is that they found that Lucky Gunner failed to use reasonable care by having no age verification for selling deadly ammunition to kids who can then take it and go shoot up a school or commit other types of shootings,” said McGuire, who also said he felt fortunate “to help provide some closure for the families about what happened and why it happened.”

In a email to CNN, Lucky Gunner’s CEO said the company was dismissed from the lawsuit more than two years ago.

“Lucky Gunner wasn’t a party to the trial, so it was easy for the jury to place some of the blame on us because we weren’t there to defend ourselves,” CEO Jake Felde wrote. The company isn’t responsible for paying any monetary damages from Monday’s verdict, he wrote.

The plaintiffs include family members of six of the eight slain students and the family of a slain teacher, along with four survivors injured in the shooting. The shotgun and handgun used in the shooting were both legally owned by Dimitrios Pagourtzis’ parents.

The trial included emotional testimony from victims and their families, as well as Pagourtzis’ family members.

The shooter’s father testified he didn’t realize his son was severely depressed. “Sometimes it takes years to recognize that your kid’s sick,” Pagourtzis said.

He acknowledged he did not teach his son about gun safety, but he said keeping more than a dozen weapons locked in a display cabinet and a gun safe should have been sufficient.

The parents have not been charged with any crime. The criminal trial of Dimitrios Pagourtzis – who was 17 at the time of the shooting that killed 10 and wounded 13 – was delayed indefinitely after a judge found him mentally incompetent.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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