The parents of the accused gunman in the 2018 Santa Fe school shooting were found not liable for negligence by a Galveston County jury Monday.
The civil case was filed shortly after the shooting by parents of the victims and several wounded survivors. They accused Antonios Pagourtzis and Rose Marie Kosmetatos of failing to recognize their son’s deteriorating mental health condition and inadequately securing the family’s firearms, ultimately leading to the shooting that left eight students and two teachers dead.
“If someone commits a crime, we hold that person responsible for the crime they committed, not the parents,” said Lori Laird, an attorney for the defense. “What we should be looking at is what’s reasonable in a case like this.”
Speaking on behalf of the plaintiffs, attorney Clint McGuire said that, while the verdict was disappointing, it still helped to raise awareness about the shooting and firearm safety.
“This is one of the largest verdicts in Galveston County history,” McGuire said. “We didn’t get the ultimate outcome we wanted, but we made progress.”
McGuire said there are currently no plans to appeal the jury’s verdict.
[…]
While the family escaped unscathed, Dimitrios and Lucky Gunner, a Tennessee-based ammunition company, were found liable for the shooting. Lucky Gunner previously settled with families out of court, but the jury nonetheless found the company partially responsible for the shooting.
Since Lucky Gunner previously settled the claim, the jury’s findings were purely a matter of legal procedure and did not grant the plaintiffs anything extra in compensation. The company sold the then 17-year-old more than 100 rounds of ammunition used in the shooting. At no point did they request identification from Dimitrios.
It remains unclear how plaintiffs intend to collect the millions owed to them by Dimitrios, who is currently in a state mental health facility.
See here for a bit of background; as noted in that post, I had not followed this particular shooting closely. I’m okay with this verdict – while there are times when the parents of a mass shooter can and should be held responsible, this didn’t look like a clear case of that to me. I’m glad that the ammunition supplier will have to pay out – I very much favor lawsuits against the profit-seeking enablers of these massacres.
All of this is against a backdrop of the extreme need for legislative mitigations, beginning with the corrupt Supreme Court and going from there. Lawsuits like this have become the only means for finding any kind of accountability, and that’s among the many, many things that are wrong with this picture. We have a long way to go, but we can get there. The Trib and Texas Public Radio have more.