As the nation has struggled to respond to mass shootings, often carried out by teenagers living at home, focus has turned to the parents of the gunmen and whether they bear responsibility. That has been the question at the center of a civil trial n Galveston, Tex., reports the New York Times. The defendants are the parents of a 17-year-old gunman who killed eight of his classmates and two teachers at Santa Fe High School in 2018. The trial is the first such case since a jury in Michigan found the parents of a 15-year-old gunman guilty this year of involuntary manslaughter in a mass shooting that their son committed at Oxford High School in 2021. Prosecutors presented evidence that the parents had ignored warning signs and failed to lock up the handgun that they purchased for their son, which he used in the shooting.
The difference in Texas is that the parents of the gunman, Antonios Pagourtzis and Rose Marie Kosmetatos, have not been accused of ay crime. Instead, the case is among the first in which those victimized by a school shooting are trying to hold the gunman’s parents liable in civil court. For nearly two weeks now, the parents have sat in court just a few yards from the parents of the children killed in the massacre. Photos of the victims as they appeared before the shooting have been shown to the jury, as have those of the gunman cuddling with his father and performing in a Greek dance troupe at his church just a few days before the attack. “I’m Christian. I believe in God. I no believe in shooting,” Mr. Pagourtzis said during questioning by the plaintiffs’ lawyer. “You try to tell me I’m bad. I say, I tried my best.” At issue is whether the gunman’s parents were negligent in how they stored the firearms at home — about a dozen rifles and shotguns and at least one handgun — and whether they could have taken steps to help their son, Dimitrios Pagourtzis, who has been declared mentally incompetent to stand trial. “There were red flags,” Clint McGuire, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said in his opening statement. “If they did not know that he was depressed, like they’re claiming, it’s because they failed in their job as parents, and they should have known.”