Two more families whose children were killed in the mass shooting at Santa Fe High School shooting in Texas are joining a lawsuit against the gunman’s parents, alleging they failed to keep guns away from a “monstrous murderer.” That means a total of four of the families are now part of this lawsuit against the parents of Dimitrios Pagourtzis that also alleges they failed to get mental health counseling and other services for their son. Pagourtzis, 17, is suspectedof being the gunman who killed eight students and two teachers on May 18 when he rampaged his school with a .38 caliber handgun and a sawed off shotgun.
Pamela Stanich, the mother of Jared Black, 17, and Shannan Claussen, the mother of victim Christian Riley Garcia, 15, will become the newest plaintiffs next week. That means they will be joining the lawsuit that was initially filed by the parents of Chris Stone, 17, and later joined by the parents of Aaron Kyle McLeod, 15.
The lawsuit accuses parents Antonios Pagourtzis and Rose Marie Kosmetatos of letting their son have access to weapons. If he didn’t have the weapons “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.” Although Dimitrios Pagourtzis was the one who allegedly pulled the trigger to kill all those people at his school, “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 and grossly negligently failed to secure their weapons in a reasonable and prudent way and put them directly and proximately into use as authors of community-wide tragedy and incomprehensible loss.”
In a Facebook post, Angelica Stone, the sister of Chris Stone, wrote a Facebook post explaining that the lawsuit was not about money. “This has NOTHING to do with the money. No amount of money can fill the empty hole in my chest I have to live with everyday that only my brother could fill,” Angelica Stone wrote. “This has EVERYTHING to do with starting a change. And we believe change starts with the parents being more responsible with their weapons and knowing what their children are doing.”
