Santa Fe family sues alleged gunman’s parents
They seek $1M in a wrongful death suit after son was killed
The parents of a student killed last week during the mass shooting at Santa Fe High School are seeking $1 million in a wrongful death suit that accuses the alleged gunman’s parents of permitting their son access to their firearms.
According to the wrongful death suit, Christopher Stone and Rosie Yanas, the parents of junior Christopher Jake Stone, allege that Dimitrios Pagourtzis’ parents failed to properly secure their firearms from their son, allowing him unsupervised access to weapons and ammunition. The suit also accuses them of failing to get mental health counseling for their son, neglecting to warn the public of his “dangerous propensities” and entrusting weapons to him.
Pagourtzis is accused of a mass shooting at the high school that left 10 dead and 13 injured May 18, authorities said. He was arrested and charged with capital murder.
He was being held Friday in the Galveston County jail.
The Galveston County suit states that Dimitrios Pagourtzis’ parents, Antonios Pagourtzis and Rose Marie Kosmetatos, should be held responsible for their son’s actions.
“Had the Murderer not had available to him the weapons for his carnage, his hidden black rage might well have continued to simmer within, but the life’s blood of his teachers and peers ... would not have been so horribly, callously and needlessly spilled,” the suit concluded. “The Murderer pulled the pistol’s and sawedoff shotgun’s triggers, but also upon them, pressed just as firmly, were the fingers of his parents, who utterly failed to teach their son any respect for life whatsoever and who negligently … failed to secure their weapons in a reasonable and prudent way.”
The suit continued that the suspect’s parents should be “held fully accountable…for the dreadful and irredeemable losses their weapons directly and proximately caused.”
Christopher Stone’s funeral was Friday afternoon.
Neither his family’s attorney nor the Pagourtzis family could be reached for comment Friday.
The suspect’s family said in a statement last week that it was “saddened and dismayed” by the shootings and expressed condolences to the victims. The family was cooperating with the investigation.
“We are shocked as anyone else by these events that occurred,” the family said in a statement. “We are gratified by the public comments made by other Santa Fe High School students that show Dimitri as we know him: a smart, quiet, sweet boy. While we remain mostly in the dark about the specifics of yesterday’s tragedy, what we have learned from media reports seems incompatible with the boy we love.”