Testimony by a former Galveston County sheriff’s deputy Thursday raised questions about how fast and effectively police responded to the mass shooting inside Santa Fe High School.
Sgt. Brent Cooley, retired from the Galveston County Sheriff’s Office, testified that he waited for other officers to join him before approaching the art room where Dimitrios Pagourtzis is accused of killing eight students and two teachers during the May 18, 2018, shooting.
“I knew that if I had gone into the door by myself, he would have killed me,” Cooley said, and that Pagourtzis’ position inside the classroom had created a “fatal funnel” that would have exposed him to danger as well.
“I chose not to kill myself,” Cooley said.
Cooley, the officer who eventually handcuffed Pagourtzis when he surrendered to police, bristled while responding to questioning from defense attorney Lori Laird, herself a former police officer. Laird suggested that he waited 30 minutes to breach the classroom and asked how many of the Santa Fe victims may have bled to death while officers waited to breach the room.
“Be careful at what you are suggesting,” Cooley said at one point.
“It’s not as simple as you’re trying to put it,” he said at another point.
Cooley and another officer testified that officers exchanged gunfire with Pagourtzis.
Laird attempted to have security footage from inside the school be shown to the jury, but that request was denied by County Court at Law Judge Jack Ewing.
Victims and their families filed a lawsuit against the shooting suspect, seeking damage for battery, and his parents, Antonios Pagourtzis and Rose Mary Kosmetatos, for negligence over allegations that they didn’t safely secure the guns used in the shootings and didn’t act to address their son’s mental illness before the shooting.
Thursday’s testimony raised the specter of the police criticism that would become a national outrage in the Uvalde school shooting in 2022.
Late Thursday, family members of Santa Fe shooting victims said they were frustrated by the defense attorney’s efforts to deflect blame for the shooting.
“I’m not here to talk about what the police did or didn’t do, I’m here to talk about the parents who didn’t lock up their guns,” said Rhonda Hart, the mother of shooting victim Kimberly Vaughan.
Defense attorneys during opening arguments suggested that blame should also be cast on other groups that aren’t party to the lawsuit, including the Santa Fe Independent School District and the company that sold ammunition to the then-17-year-old suspect.
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Neither state nor federal agencies have ever investigated or issued a report on the Santa Fe shooting. Pagourtzis’ criminal trial on capital murder charges has been indefinitely delayed after he was ruled mentally incompetent to stand trial and sent for treatment to a state hospital in North Texas.
Parents have called on the federal government to open a belated investigation into the shooting.
“We want this information public,” said Scot Rice, the husband of wounded teacher Flo Rice. “We want everybody to listen and learn from this.”
I’ve only written a little about the Santa Fe mass shooting, so I have no idea if there have long been questions about the police response or if this is something new. I favor there being a federal investigation either way, and for there to be more such investigations across the country. We’ve done so little in other areas to prevent and mitigate mass shootings, we may as well aim to force improvements in this area.