Lawyers demand $1.2 billion in Santa Fe massacre trial | Local news

The plaintiff's attorneys asked the jury for more than $1 billion in damages for the loss of the eight students and two teachers killed and 13 injured at Santa Fe High School on May 18, 2018.

However, they argued that the main point in this case was to send a message to the world that the people of the United States are taking action to prevent school shootings.

“It is the most important case currently underway in the country,” attorney Clint McGuire said Friday during his closing argument. “Their verdict will determine how safe children can feel in school.”

According to testimony, defense attorneys argue that Antonios Pagourtzis and Kosmetatos failed to recognize the signs of their son's simmering psychosis and did everything a reasonable gun owner would do to secure their weapons.

“If this was really about justice, we would wait for the criminal trial, but this is about holding the parents accountable,” said defense attorney Lori Laird. “Something happened to them, too. They, too, will never be the same again.”

Closing arguments began Friday morning after about three weeks of testimony revealed brutal details of the shooting that had been largely kept from the public because of the stalled criminal case against Pagourtzis. The courtroom has been packed with victims' relatives and attorneys nearly every day since the trial began on July 31, with court officials opening an additional room to handle the enormous interest in the trial.

The 1999 Columbine High School shooting taught parents that the threat of school shootings was real, that mental health issues were serious and that gun owners needed to store their weapons responsibly, the plaintiff's attorneys argued.

“The defense argued that there were no recognizable signs, that no one noticed any warning signs,” McGuire said.

But on Aug. 10, plaintiffs learned that Antonios Pagourtzis and Kosmetatos had told a psychiatrist that they knew something was wrong with their son before the shooting but didn't know how to fix the problem, McGuire said.

The fact that their son, once an A student, had been failing school in the months before the shooting should also have been noticed by Pagourtzis' parents and alarmed, McGuire argued.

He missed school 57 times without excuse, stopped bathing regularly, stopped doing his homework, became even more withdrawn than he already was and spent about $1,700 on tactical gear, which would worry any reasonable parent, McGuire argued.

Plaintiffs argued that Pagourtzis' parents also failed to notice that he had taken three shotguns from his father's gun cabinet in the living room and sawed off the barrels, that he kept bomb-making materials in his father's gun cabinet in the garage and that he had tested a bomb in the garage, McGuire said.

“And after all that, they didn't help him and didn't stow their weapons safely,” McGuire said.

However, the plaintiff's lawyers argued in their closing arguments Friday that Pagourtzis's statements about Natasha and the CIA were made after the shooting and do not appear anywhere in hundreds of pages of his numerous diaries, McGuire said.

“When a hurricane comes, do we blame God? Mental illness is an invisible, unheard tidal wave,” Laird said.

Pagourtzis shows a lack of motivation and a certain withdrawal, both of which are common among teenagers and are not a sign that he is depressed or has serious mental health problems, Laird argued.

“The losses in this case are enormous,” McGuire said. “Every waking moment is agony for them.”

The plaintiffs' lawyers arrived at a $1.2 billion claim by calculating the number of years the victims' families lost as a result of the shooting, which came to 943 years.

But this trial is not about money, the defense argued, but about sending a message to U.S. lawmakers and the world that steps are being taken to prevent the next school shooting.

The jury began deliberations around 5 p.m. on Friday and is expected to reach a verdict next week.