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GALVESTON (AP) — The parents of a former Texas high school student accused of killing 10 people during a 2018 shooting on his campus bear responsibility for what happened because they failed to help their son amid a mental health crisis or to limit his access to the family’s guns, an attorney representing victims’ families told jurors on Wednesday.

“This shooting was premeditated, it was predictable and it was preventable,” attorney Clint McGuire said during opening statements in the civil trial of a lawsuit seeking to hold Dimitrios Pagourtzis and his parents, Antonios Pagourtzis and Rose Marie Kosmetatos, financially liable for the shooting at Santa Fe High School in May 2018.

Lori Laird, an attorney for Pagourtzis’ parents, told jurors the couple is heartbroken by the shooting but their son’s mental illness is ultimately to blame for what happened.

“If there had been signs and symptoms, I guarantee you this mom … she would have immediately done something about that,” Laird said.

The lawsuit was filed by family members of seven of those killed and four of the 13 people wounded in the attack.

Pagourtzis was charged with capital murder for the shooting. He was a 17-year-old student when authorities said he killed eight students and two teachers at the school, located about 35 miles (55 kilometers) southeast of Houston.

The criminal case against the now-23-year-old remains on hold after he was declared incompetent to stand trial. He has been held at the North Texas State Hospital in Vernon since December 2019.

McGuire told jurors that Antonios Pagourtzis and Kosmetatos knew their son was suffering from depression, started getting bad grades and isolating himself, began taking weapons from their gun cabinet and safe, started making disturbing posts on Facebook and began ordering online ammunition and other items such as a knife with a Nazi symbol and a T-shirt that said, “Born To Kill.”

“In spite of the fact he was trying to give them signs, if they did not know he was depressed as they’re claiming, it’s because they failed in their job as parents,” said McGuire, who is representing the families of five students who were killed and two others who were injured. Kosmetatos, who sat at the defense table with her husband, cried as McGuire spoke to jurors.

Laird told jurors Kosmetatos and her husband were good parents who worked hard and tried to do the best for their children. She said Pagourtzis was a typical teenager who was unmotivated and didn’t want to do his schoolwork, but she insisted there were no red flag warnings, such as disciplinary or drug problems. She also said that his parents didn’t know any of their weapons were missing or that he had hidden his online purchases of ammunition and other weapons.

“What needs to be clear to everyone is Dimitrios was suffering in silence. No one saw this,” Laird said.

Laird suggested that some of the blame also belongs with Lucky Gunner, a Tennessee-based online retailer that sold Dimitrios Pagourtzis more than 100 rounds of ammunition without verifying he was old enough to buy it. She also blamed the school for not alerting Pagourtzis’ parents of online searches he had made on a campus computer related to school shootings, suicide and weapons.

Lucky Gunner was a defendant in the lawsuit until last year, when it reached a settlement with the families.

Roberto Torres, who is representing Dimitrios Pagourtzis in the lawsuit, told jurors that while his client did plan the shooting, he was never in control of his actions because of his severe mental illness.

The families are pursuing at least $1 million in damages, but the jury could award a higher amount.

After the trial ended for the day, family members of those killed and wounded in the shooting said the lawsuit wasn’t about money but about people being held accountable for actions that enabled the shooting.

Rosie Yanas-Stone, whose 17-year-old son Christopher Stone was killed, said she was upset by what she heard as excuses from Dimitrios Pagourtzis’ parents.

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

The trial could last up to three weeks.

Similar lawsuits have been filed following other mass shootings.

In 2022, a jury awarded over $200 million to the mother of one of four people killed in a shooting at a Waffle House in Nashville, Tennessee. The lawsuit had been filed against the shooter and his father, who was accused of returning a rifle to his son before the shooting despite the son’s mental health issues.

In April, Jennifer and James Crumbley were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison by a Michigan judge after becoming the first parents convicted in a U.S. mass school shooting.

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HOUSTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris will deliver a eulogy for U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee at a North Houston church on Thursday as days of memorials for the longtime Democratic lawmaker draw to a close.

Harris is poised to be the first Black woman to be a major party’s presidential candidate, and Jackson Lee became one of Congress’ most prominent Black women during nearly three decades representing her Texas district. She helped lead federal efforts to protect women from domestic violence and recognize Juneteenth as a national holiday.

Jackson Lee was 74 when she died on July 19 after being treated for pancreatic cancer. Harris, a former California senator, said in a statement after her death that she was “one of our nation’s fiercest, smartest, and most strategic leaders in the way she thought about how to make progress happen.”

Services for Jackson Lee began on Monday when hundreds of people paid their respects to Jackson Lee as her body lay in state in a flag-draped coffin inside Houston’s City Hall. President Joe Biden was one of the visitors, placing a bouquet of flowers near her casket and visiting with Jackson Lee’s family.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Jackson Lee was remembered at viewings at two different churches.

The Democrat had represented her Houston-based district and the nation’s fourth-largest city since 1995. She previously had breast cancer and announced the pancreatic cancer diagnosis on June 2.

Before being elected to Congress, Jackson Lee served on Houston’s city council from 1990 to 1994.

After first being elected, Jackson Lee quickly established herself as a fierce advocate for women and minorities and a leader for House Democrats on many social justice issues, from policing reform to reparations for descendants of enslaved people. She led the first rewrite of the Violence Against Women Act in nearly a decade, which included protections for Native American, transgender and immigrant women.

Jackson Lee routinely won reelection to Congress with ease. She unsuccessfully ran to be Houston’s mayor last year.

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Follow Juan A. Lozano on X: https://twitter.com/juanlozano70

AUSTIN – The Austiin American-Statesman reports the Texas Democratic Party says as many as seven of 10 petition signatures submitted to the Texas secretary of state’s office by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to qualify his independent bid for president on the statewide ballot for the Nov. 5 election are invalid and should be rejected. Kennedy, the son and namesake of the late Democratic U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy of New York, was at the Texas Capitol on May 15 where he and his campaign team submitted 245,572 petition signatures to Secretary of State Jane Nelson’s office. Kennedy boasted at a rally in Austin that evening that his petition signature total was record-breaking and contained more than twice the number required under law for third-party candidates.

But Austin lawyer Chad Dunn, representing the Texas Democratic Party, said in a letter to Nelson this month that 69% of the 245,000 people who signed on Kennedy’s behalf were not eligible to do so. That means that if the percentage holds for the remaining signatures, Kennedy would fall short of the minimum needed by around 37,000, Dunn said. “Based on these public records and no other information, it is clear that Mr. Kennedy’s petition signatures are insufficient in number to meet the requirements of state law,” Dunn said in his letter. The Kennedy campaign has disputed the Democrats’ analysis and plans to hold a video news briefing Wednesday to address the matter. To qualify for a place on the 2024 Texas presidential ballot, state law requires 113,151 signatures from registered Texas voters who did not vote in either the Democratic or Republican primary in March. The secretary of state’s office declined to weigh in on Dunn’s letter or on the calculations done by the state Democratic Party, but it said it is still combing through Kennedy’s petition signatures as required by state law, and it expects to reach a decision by late August before the official state ballot is finalized. Kennedy, whose father was gunned down during his own campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968, entered the 2024 race as a challenger to President Joe Biden for the party’s nomination. His bid attracted little Democratic support, with several members of the extended Kennedy family instead endorsing the incumbent.

HOUSTON – The Houston Chronicle reports that CenterPoint Energy expects to incur as much as $1.8 billion in costs from its efforts to restore power after May’s severe storms and July’s Hurricane Beryl, company executives said during a second-quarter earnings call Tuesday in which it reported a steep jump in profits over the year earlier. The company said it would seek approval from the Public Utility Commission of Texas to issue bonds to recover $1.5 billion to $1.7 billion of its storm-related costs, Chief Financial Officer Christopher Foster told investors and analysts. Foster estimated residential customers could see a 2% increase in their electricity bills for the next 15 years to pay down the debt, which carries interest. Another $100 million of investments in its transmission system, the long-distance towers and lines, would be included in CenterPoint’s next scheduled rate increase request, Foster said. CenterPoint reported income of $228 million for the quarter ended June 30, up from $118 million in the year-earlier period.

Failure to recoup the costs could shake investor confidence in the company, one analyst said. The storm-related cost estimates come as CenterPoint executives try to walk a fine line of satisfying Texas’ elected officials — who are calling for accountability from the company and even floating proposals to claw back profits — while easing investor concerns over whether the company will gain approval for past and future capital spending. CenterPoint earns a 9.4% rate of equity, essentially profit, on its capital expenditures. It has dramatically increased capital investments in recent years, boosting the investor-owned utility’s stock price. If CenterPoint were unable to recover its May and July storm-related costs, investors would lose confidence not only in CenterPoint’s current management team but also in the wisdom of investing in Texas utilities going forward, said Anthony Crowdell, an utility analyst with the investment bank Mizuho Americas. “Does the risk change with investing in a Texas utility? That’s what everyone’s trying to figure out,” Crowdell said. After Monday’s fiery first hearing of a special state Senate committee tasked with investigating utilities’ response to Beryl, senators on both sides of the aisle suggested they were opposed to CenterPoint recovering its hurricane-related costs.

GALVESTON (AP) — A lawsuit accusing the parents of a former Texas high school student of negligence for not securing weapons he allegedly used in a 2018 shooting at his campus that killed 10 people was set to go before a jury on Wednesday.

Opening statements were expected in Galveston, Texas, in the civil trial over the lawsuit filed by family members of seven of those killed and four of the 13 people wounded in the attack at Santa Fe High School in May 2018.

Dimitrios Pagourtzis was charged with capital murder for the shooting. Pagourtzis was a 17-year-old student when authorities said he killed eight students and two teachers at the school, located about 35 miles (55 kilometers) southeast of Houston.

The now 23-year-old’s criminal trial has been on hold as he’s been declared incompetent to stand trial and has remained at the North Texas State Hospital in Vernon since December 2019.

The lawsuit is seeking to hold Pagourtzis and his parents, Antonios Pagourtzis and Rose Marie Kosmetatos, financially liable for the shooting. The families are pursuing at least $1 million in damages.

The lawsuit accuses Pagourtzis’ parents of knowing their son was at risk of harming himself or others. It alleges Pagourtzis had been exhibiting signs of emotional distress and violent fantasies but his parents did nothing to get him help or secure a handgun and shotgun kept at their home that he allegedly ended up using during the shooting.

“We look forward to obtaining justice for the victims of the senseless tragedy,” said Clint McGuire, an attorney representing the families of five students who were killed and two others who were injured.

Lori Laird, an attorney for Pagourtzis’ parents, did not immediately reply to an email seeking comment.

In a court filing, Roberto Torres, who is representing Pagourtzis in the lawsuit, denied the allegations against his client, saying that “due to mental impairment or illness, (Pagourtzis) did not have sufficient capacity to have a reasonable degree of rational understanding of or control over his actions.”

The trial could last up to three weeks.

Family members of those killed or wounded have welcomed the start of the civil trial as they have expressed frustration that Pagourtzis’ criminal trial has been on hold for years, preventing them from having a sense of closure.

Lucky Gunner, a Tennessee-based online retailer accused of illegally selling ammunition to Pagourtzis, had also been one of the defendants in the lawsuit. But in 2023, the families settled their case against the retailer, who had been accused of failing to verify Pagourtzis’ age when he bought more than 100 rounds of ammunition on two occasions before the shooting.

Other similar lawsuits have been filed following a mass shooting.

In 2022, a jury awarded over $200 million to the mother of one of four people killed in a shooting at a Waffle House in Nashville, Tennessee. The lawsuit had been filed against the shooter and his father, who was accused of giving back a rifle to his son before the shooting despite his son’s mental health issues.

In April, Jennifer and James Crumbley were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison by a Michigan judge after becoming the first parents convicted in a U.S. mass school shooting.

LIVINGSTON (AP) — In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Beryl, Marilyn Mayville wasn’t sure where to get help.

The 72-year-old East Texan was without power and reliable cell service. Her phone was quickly running out of power. A heat wave had settled in. A nephew in Dallas eventually reached the widow and told her about a cooling center just on the other side of Highway 59 from her apartment.

“I didn’t really know what to do, but it gets pretty warm at night,” Mayville said. “He’s in Dallas and he knows more than I do.”

On that first day after Beryl, Mayville said she was one of just five people at the cooling station. If Beryl was quick to drench Livingston, a town still recovering from a rash of floods earlier this year, news of community resources was slow to reach residents.

By the next day Mayville was joined by dozens of other Livingston residents.

At the cooling station, Mayville kept up with neighbors and her church family in those periods where cell service returned.

Communication is key for keeping residents safe during a disaster. Rural communities, especially in East Texas, start from a deficit. Much of the region lacks quality broadband and cellphone access making it difficult for residents to track developments from news organizations online.

And there is a growing distrust in institutions such as the news media and government.

It comes as no surprise to Jennifer Horney, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Delaware and former associate professor at Texas A&M, that rural residents say they feel uninformed during and after disasters.

“When official notifications come out, people either don’t trust it or they believe that their local knowledge is more accurate than a recommendation from the state or federal government,” Horney said.

Rural residents often prefer to find their information through social media, friends and neighbors, Horney said.

Most residents in Deep East Texas, which includes Polk County and Livingston, should receive alerts through the Genasys Mass Notification System operated by the Deep East Texas Council of Governments, a coalition of local governments.

“The Genasys Platform utilizes voice, text and email messages as well as geofencing to select certain areas of a city or county to be targeted for messages,” said Lonnie Hunt, the council’s director. “The Genasys Platform sends messages to landline phones, obtained through an interlocal agreement with the DETCOG Regional 9-1-1 Program, and the numbers are updated quarterly.”

It is also very common for the counties to maintain active social media accounts, even if just to share information from the National Weather Service, Texas Storm Chasers or the Texas Division of Emergency Management.

Polk County also utilizes its own text message system, AlertMePolkCounty, and County Judge Sydney Murphy keeps the messaging consistent across platforms and news releases. As the county’s chief executive and head of emergency management, she believes her job is to keep residents informed when disaster strikes – which it has multiple times this year.

Regular posts with information ranging from weather alerts to opportunities for assistance litter the emergency management Facebook page in a bid to keep residents safe, but also help them rebuild.

“I’m the one that’s sitting there, answering questions and sending out information to make sure that it is immediate,” Murphy said. “The minute we receive notice that this road is caving, or that road is closed, we immediately send out the notification so there’s no confusion about it.”

Beryl, the most recent storm to roll through East Texas, was the second natural disaster to hit the community in a matter of months and followed a stormy winter season that kept Polk County residents on alert.

But these attempts at communication can only go so far as infrastructure allows. Whether it is a news organization posting regular updates online, or a county judge making Facebook posts, someone without service won’t see it. Likewise, systems like AlertMe or Genasys can relay information quickly and effectively, but only if the person on the receiving end has actual cell service.

A lack of access to broadband has long beleaguered communities like those Murphy serves. The council conducted a broadband study in partnership with inCode Consulting, a global telecommunications consulting firm in 2019.

The study determined that broadband only effectively served 15% of what was actually needed. High speed internet was most accessible near schools and utility coops, but was limited otherwise.

Texans approved $1.5 billion in tax dollars to expand broadband access and emergency communications in 2023. The federal government allocated billions more. So more of the state should be on the path for connectivity, but developing that infrastructure will take time.

Furthermore, cellular service – which is reportedly better than broadband through the region – is still unreliable, especially in the unincorporated communities between established towns.

Murphy is actively expanding broadband across the county to provide full coverage for all her residents. Polk County parlayed a grant to multiple telecommunications providers to expand broadband to the entirety of Polk County.

“By the end of 2025, Polk County will have full fiber connectivity north to south and east to west and redundancy,” Murphy said. “No other rural community around us has that right or even or even as close to it.”

And Polk County used American Rescue Plan Act funds to construct a 440 foot communications tower that cellular providers can rent space on to provide better cell service.

Building trust is a different challenge.

There are still days when Murphy’s inboxes are filled with people complaining about how things are handled. Which she tends to ignore, unless they’re in regard to something she can actually fix. But there are also moments when residents ask a poignant question that would benefit the rest of the community to know, so Murphy does her best to answer those effectively and broadcast them.

She has found that her methods of communication have established some trust not just among her constituents, but of those in surrounding communities. After each disaster, she sees an uptick in subscriptions to the county’s text service and followers on social media.

“We have a lot of people that follow our Facebook page that are from San Jacinto County, Tyler County and Trinity County,” Murphy said. “During the pandemic and during (Hurricane) Harvey, we even had people from Harris County sending us questions.”

Polk County residents, Marissa Suski and her husband, Brian, felt lost about who to believe as Hurricane Beryl began to turn north.

The path of the hurricane had changed and was barreling directly toward them. Further exacerbating their worries, rumors of the Lake Livingston Dam failing had spread like wildfire.

“One person says one thing and you call and another person says something else,” Brian Suski said. “One person said the dam was going to fail. Another person said no, we’re just taking precautions to notify everybody. It was a lot of back and forth.”

They looked to news outlets, social media and made their own calls to government agencies but felt the answers were different from every source.

The one system they found had the most reliable information were text messages that came unbidden to their phones. The Suskis didn’t know where the texts were coming from, but they told them about boil-water notices in the past and kept them up-to-date with the flooding in April. Following Beryl, they learned quickly about the Polk County cooling stations, what help the state was sending and where to pick up MREs.

“I’m not going to lie, believe it or not, I trust those things more than what’s coming out of a human’s mouth,” Marissa said. “They’ve been pretty right on key.”

The texts were coming from Murphy.