A Florida student accused of beating a school employee unconscious after she confiscated his Nintendo Switch last year was sentenced to five years in prison Tuesday, court records show.
Brendan Depa, 18, pleaded no contest to one count of aggravated battery on an elected official or education employee, according to sentencing documents from the Seventh Judicial Circuit Court in Flagler County.
Depa, who was 17 at the time of the assault, was also sentenced to 15 years of probation.
A 17-year-old special needs student from Matanzas High School in Flagler County, Fla., was accused of violently attacking a teacher's aide after the aide took away the student's Nintendo game. Flagler County Sheriff’s Office via WESH
During Depa’s sentencing, Judge Terence Perkins said Depa had shown no remorse over the assault on Feb. 21, 2023, at Matanzas High School, north of Daytona Beach.
Video of the incident shows Depa charging the employee and knocking her to the ground. It shows her body go limp as he kicks and punches her more than a dozen times.
An arrest report said the employee, Joan Naydich, lost consciousness. In court, Naydich testified that she continues to struggle with anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder because of the assault, according to NBC affiliate WESH of Orlando.
“My life will never be what it was before,” she said, according to the station.
Depa’s mother testified that her son has mental health issues and was triggered by the removal of his electronics, the station reported. A court-ordered evaluation found that he has autism and several other conditions, according to an order that found him competent to stand trial.
“I think he needs help, and I think he needs treatment,” Leanne Depa told the station after his sentencing. “But I don’t think he needs to be put away in a prison where he’s going to be taken advantage of or harmed.”
She told the station that her son’s school district failed him by not following the individualized education program developed to help with his special needs.
Lawyers for her family sued the district this year, accusing school officials of failing to provide her son with proper support and helping prompt the assault, according to a copy of the complaint obtained by WFTS-TV of Tampa.
The school district would not comment on the allegations, the station reported. The district superintendent did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday night.
Successful-Winter237 on August 8th, 2024 at 18:32 UTC »
MMW: listen… as a teacher in the trenches we are losing teachers all the time and there’s nobody to replace them.
When I started, there were hundreds of applicants.. now we are lucky to get a handful.
And I’m in a decent district in a blue state.
Unless something drastically changes we are going to see the end of public education sooner than people realize.
djwurm on August 8th, 2024 at 18:01 UTC »
something like this happened to my wife. 6th grade class and during math this boy got his iPad out and she could tell he was playing a game on it.. she asked him multiple times to turn it off and put it away. He kept saying one second he has to finish this level or he was going to have to start over. Wife told him you are not even allowed to have that out much less be playing a game.. he screamed at her saying stop bothering me I have to finish. she reached down to grab the iPad and he swung at her (hitting her in the shoulder) and started the raw gutteral sound scream and went berserker mode flipping his desk and throwing anything within his reach..
a few male teachers from classrooms next door could hear it and came rushing in to subdue the kid.
QuadraKev_ on August 8th, 2024 at 17:51 UTC »
How is the school employee doing?