This past week, the civil trial against the parents of Dimitrios Pagourtzis began in Texas. As you may recall, Pagourtzis was 17 in May 2018, when he entered Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe, Texas, armed with his parents’ shotgun and .38 pistol. The ensuing violence resulted in the deaths of eight students and two teachers, with 13 others sustaining injuries.

Since 2019, Pagourtzis has been ruled mentally incompetent to stand trial. He is currently 23-years-old.

The lawsuit claims that Pagourtzis’ parents were negligent both in failing to address his mental health issues and in their inadequate storage of the firearms used in the shooting.

According to the attorney representing the victims’ families, Pagourtzis did not have a job in the period leading up to the shooting. Despite this, he managed to order $1,700 worth of materials, which were allegedly used in planning the attack. This included 29 deliveries to his home, which included ammunition. We’ll get back to the ammunition in a little bit.

The attorney for the plaintiffs, also accused Pagourtzis’ parents of knowing that their son was having mental issues and that he was taking guns from their gun cabinet.

Meanwhile, the attorney for the defendants claimed Pagourtzis was just your typical teenager who did not exhibit any red flags, and that his parents had no idea any of their weapons were missing.

Instead, the attorney for Pagourtzis’ parents placed the blame on the online gun store that sold ammunition to the 17-year-old, as well as on the school for failing to address Pagourtzis’ alarming online searches related to school shootings.

It was also brought up that the family was dealing with the suicide of Pagourtzis’ uncle.

Another piece of testimony that I found interesting is that the Pagourtzises didn’t actually live in Santa Fe. They owned a vacant trailer with a Santa Fe address that allowed them to skirt the requirements for their son to attend Santa Fe High. I know this isn’t the most egregious sin ever committed, but I think it is an insight into the quality of his parents’ character. It also means that if they didn’t have the trailer, the shooting would have happened at another school instead. Pagourtzis also left notes in the trailer for police to find after the shooting.

Pagourtzis’ journal, which almost all shooters are required to have for some reason, was also exhibited in court…

“I am so sick of being treated like a second class citizen. People treat me like I’m just some dumb animal they can mess without any repercussions. I’m tired of people treating me like some kind of lesser than and thinking they can get away with it. You people are playing with fire and are about to get burned.”

“You want a motive? How about because the idea of pumping my classmates full of buckshot and watching them writhe on the ground in agony like the vermin they are is an exhilarating thought.”

Again, here we have the chicken or the egg question when it comes to school shooters. For example, Pagourtzis would frequently wear a black trench coat to school along with a t-shirt that read ‘Born to Kill’. Both are references to the infamous shooting at Columbine. So which came first, the supposed mistreatment at the hands of fellow students, or his weird obsession with Columbine?

As I’ve said in the past, most school shootings since Columbine have been copycats of Columbine in one form or another. It’s my supposition that most of these copycats become entrenched in the columbiner culture, before developing these persecution complexes.

But let’s get back to the parents. If you were waiting for it, here it is. They’re obviously a pair of ‘responsible gun owners™’ if they didn’t know a shot gun and a .38 were missing. How many guns do they own not to notice two were missing? If they owned a gun cabinet, wouldn’t a missing shotgun stick out like a missing tooth? If I owned guns, not only would I make sure my guns were safely secured, I’d take stock of them to make sure none of them were missing. Bad guys with guns typically steal them from the supposed good guys with guns.

And yes, while some blame does lie at the feet of the gun store with their woefully inadequate age verification system, this is not a zero-sum game. School shootings committed by minors are almost always a perfect storm of failure between multiple entities. However, when you own a stockpile of unsecured firearms in the home of an untreated mentally ill child, you bear a lot of the blame.

I’ll leave you with the words of Rosie Yanas-Stone, whose 17-year-old son Christopher Stone was killed at Santa Fe High.

“I’m sick and tired every time a school shooting happens, it’s always ‘thoughts and prayers’ and that don’t work no more. As long as we got people like these parents and everybody else saying, ‘Not my fault, not my fault.’ So whose fault is it?”

(Sources)

• Parents of accused 2018 Santa Fe HS shooter appear in court on first day of civil trial
• Attorney says parents of ex-student accused in Texas school shooting bear responsibility for attack
• ‘All I heard in there was excuses:’ Victim’s families react as opening statements made in Santa Fe school shooting trial
• ‘You want a motive?’: Chilling journal entries from suspected Santa Fe HS shooter read in court