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For days, the families of those killed in the Santa Fe High School shooting had sat in a Texas courtroom and heard how the shooter’s parents ignored warning signs that their son needed psychiatric help and failed to secure the weapons he then used to massacre 10 people.
On the day of closing arguments in the civil suit, some of the mothers dropped off the cremated remains of their children. They placed the urns on a ledge within sight of Antonios Pagourtzis and Rose Marie Kosmetatos, the shooter’s parents who are being sued by the victims’ families. When Pagourtzis and Kosmetatos saw the urns, they cried, said Rhonda Hart, whose 14-year-old daughter Kimberly Vaughan was shot and killed in the 2018 attack.
“But I was glad we did it and we got on their nerves because to me they are just bad people,” said Hart The Independent“They created a little monster and didn’t feel responsible for it. I think we got our little dig in.”
The pump gun and .38 caliber revolver with which 17-year-old Dimitrios Pagourtzis shot eight classmates and two teachers at his high school in Santa Fe, Texas, actually belonged to his parents, who had purchased both weapons legally.
However, Pagourtzis and Kosmetatos have since refused to accept blame for their son’s actions. And now they have been officially declared not guilty by a jury of their peers in Galveston District Court.
The gunman, who suffered from severe mental illness and sang Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” while firing multiple bullets into his victims, should never have had access to the firearms, according to trucker Christopher Stone and his wife Rosie Yanas Stone. Their 17-year-old son Chris was shot and killed in the horrific massacre on May 18, 2018, while attending art class. Chris, a diehard Dallas Cowboys fan, was buried in a Cowboys casket decorated with the dates of all the team’s Super Bowl victories.
“I guess that’s just the hand we were dealt,” Stone said The Independent“And it can be given to anyone.”
Although the shooter, now 23, confessed to the crime and was charged with capital crimes, he was declared incompetent to stand trial and has not yet been prosecuted.
They created a little monster and did not feel responsible for it
Rhonda Hart, whose child was killed in the 2018 school shooting
Meanwhile, the Stones filed a civil lawsuit against his parents: Pagourtzis, who owned the shotgun, and Kosmetatos, who owned the pistol with which he killed ten people and injured 13.
The Stones’ lawsuit alleges that they failed to properly store their weapons, giving their underage son the tools he needed to carry out his deadly plan. The lawsuit also named Lucky Gunner, the Tennessee-based online retailer that sold the gunman his ammunition.
The couple also ignored numerous warning signs that their teenager needed urgent psychiatric help, the lawsuit says. They believed his increasingly disturbing behavior – a penchant for Nazis, an obsession with guns, a Facebook posting of a T-shirt that read “Born to Kill” – was something he would eventually overcome.
“The killer pulled the triggers of the pistol and sawed-off shotgun, but just as hard were the fingers of his parents, who utterly failed to teach their son any respect for life, who negligently and grossly failed to secure their weapons in a reasonable and prudent manner, and who directly and immediately used them, causing a community-wide tragedy and unfathomable loss,” the lawsuit states.
The children have to take care of themselves because the adults don’t want to take responsibility.
Christopher Stone, whose son was killed in the shooting, says no justice was done
Those who made it out alive now live with the steadfast memories of the bloodshed. One police officer who nearly died that day “lost as much blood as a human being can lose and still live,” said the trauma surgeon who saved his life. At least one survivor of the Santa Fe High School shooting has suffered lead poisoning from shotgun pellets still lodged in her body, her mother said. The Independent.
Sarah Salazar, who was 16 when she was shot at Santa Fe High School, not only suffered from severely elevated lead levels, but was also partially disabled by a gunshot wound that required a complete shoulder replacement, according to Sarah’s mother, Sonia Lopez. And although Lopez said Sarah is unable to work due to the depression and post-traumatic stress disorder she still has after the shooting, she was still denied benefits, putting an additional financial burden on her and her family.
In a scenario where the shooter could not have gotten his hands on a gun, the lawsuit says, his “hidden black rage would have continued to erupt, but the lifeblood of his teacher and fellow students, including the late Christopher Jake Stone, would not have been spilled in such a horrific, callous and unnecessary manner.”
On Monday a jury in Houston the parents of the shooter are completely released from responsibilitybecause they did not find the defendants responsible for their son’s crime. Instead, the jury placed sole blame on the shooter himself and Lucky Gunner, where the teenager bought his ammunition.
“It is shameful that our whole country has to deal with this,” Stone said The Independent“The children have to take care of themselves because the adults don’t want to take responsibility.”
The verdict came about four months after James and Jennifer Crumbley were sentenced to at least ten years in prison for giving their son Ethan the gun he used in his deadly November 2021 rampage as a Christmas present. (Pagourtzis and Kosmetatos were never charged with a crime.)
Although the jury did not find the parents of the Santa Fe shooter liable, the court awarded the Stones and other affected families more than $300 million in damages.
Still, Stone said he was “disappointed” in the jury, saying he believed they “had their minds made up before they entered the room.”
His wife said she found the jury’s decision “truly heartbreaking and disappointing.”
“In my heart, I never felt that there would be no accountability at all,” said Yanas Stone The Independent“We’ve all seen the same evidence. Add to that his irresponsible gun ownership, his neglect and his health problems. I can’t believe they just ignored all of that.”
Yanas Stone, who accompanied her husband in the courtroom throughout the proceedings, said she didn’t care at all about “the money aspect.”
“I just wanted the parents to be guilty or not guilty,” she said. “You know, whether they’re going to be held accountable or not. And after (the parents were found not guilty), I left.”
It was difficult “to be in the same room with the people who are responsible for my son not being here,” Yanas Stone continued. And although the verdict was not in her favor, Yanas Stone said, “The verdict has already been made by us and we are really the only ones who matter.”
Hart, Kimberly Vaughan’s mother, said she too would have liked the jury to assign some of the blame to the parents.
Either they “didn’t want to see their son’s obvious problems” or “they just didn’t care,” Hart said. The Independent.
“So, yes, I’m disappointed, but ultimately I’m not surprised … Texas loves its guns more than its children,” she said. Hart, who joined the Stones’ lawsuit as a plaintiff, said she doesn’t believe the shooter will ever face trial, so “we should take this (the civil court victory) and be happy with it.”
At the same time, Hart, a U.S. Army veteran, said she was particularly outraged by Pagourtzis’ testimony in which he refused to take responsibility for his son’s access to his shotgun. Neither parent apologized for their son’s actions or even acknowledged their presence in the courtroom until they brought in the urns containing their children, Hart said.
Hart said she and some of the other mothers joked that it was “bring your kids to work day,” explaining that all they had left at that point was gallows humor.
Since the shooting, Yanas Stone’s life has been “torment.” But she stressed that, despite all its shortcomings, the civil case undoubtedly helped her in other ways.
“We had to fight for every single piece of information, and that’s an inhumane way to live,” Yanas Stone said. “You wake up every day and you’re just lost, and you have more and more questions. What is true, what is not true? And this process has helped a lot in bringing closure to that. I can speak for myself that it has brought me a lot of peace knowing that I have some real, concrete answers.”
Yanas Stone believes stricter gun laws would “absolutely” help slow the seemingly never-ending number of school shootings that occur frequently in the U.S. but rarely anywhere else in the world. Still, she argues, “we can’t fool ourselves into thinking we can do something to stop them.”
“Victims and survivors, I believe we’re going to be the ones who make these changes,” Yanas Stone said. “We’ve been through the trenches. We’ve been dragged through the mud. We’ve made it. So we’re just going to move on and see what we can do for the future.”
For Christopher Stone, the answer, such as it is, is simple.
“Raise good children,” he said. “Honestly, it doesn’t take much. Love your children. Teach them to love. For some, that seems impossible. But you know, it was pretty easy for me.”
