March 12 (UPI) — A Texas judge ordered a teen accused of killing 10 people at Santa Fe High School to remain in a mental health facility for up to year.
Judge John Ellisor on Wednesday said Dimitrios Pagourtzis, 19, should stay at North Texas State Hospital in Vernon for 12 months to see if he can be ruled competent to stand trial.
Pagourtzis faces 10 counts of capital murder for the May 2018 shooting that left eight students and two teachers dead about 35 miles southeast of Houston.
He’s undergone multiple psychiatric examinations and was ruled incompetent to stand trial in November.
Experts submitted a report to Ellisor this week saying he’s unlikely to regain competency within the next 90 days. The report requested Pagourtzis be hospitalized for up to a year.
Pagourtzis’ lawyer, Nick Poehl, told the court in August that his client’s mental health had deteriorated in the months since the shooting and that he didn’t understand the legal proceedings.
In February 2019, Ellis ordered the trial, which was scheduled to begin in February 2020, to be moved from Galveston County to Fort Bend County because Pagourtzis was unlikely to receive a fair trial in the county where the shooting happened and because of high publicity.
