Brendan Depa is a seventeen year old from Florida who attended Mantanzas High School who attacked a teachers aide for taking away his Nintendo Switch. According to police reports Brendan Depa who stands six feet six and pushes nearly three hundred pounds would attack Joan Naydich, 57, because she took away his video game. Brendan Depa would come flying out of the classroom and bowled the fifty seven year old woman before striking her several times knocking her unconscious.
Now Brendan Depa has been charged with aggravated assault and will be prosecuted as an adult so is facing thirty years in the Florida Prison System. Brendan Depa who had been arrested three times before on assault charges is being held on a one million dollar bond.
Brendan Depa More News
Brendan Depa, the 17-year-old Matanzas High School special education student captured in surveillance video brutally attacking Joan Naydich, a paraprofessional at the school, was charged as an adult Friday by the State Attorney’s Office.
Brendan Depa had originally been charged with aggravated battery causing bodily harm after the Feb. 21 incident, but as a juvenile. He was booked at Flagler County jail then transferred to a Department of juvenile Justice jail in Daytona Beach. Such charges typically result in limited time in detention, and probationary terms. (See: “Matanzas High School Special Education Student Arrested in Attack of Teacher Aide.”)
A sheriff’s spokesperson said Sunday evening he was now held at the county jail, on $1 million bond.
The adult charge is a first degree felony, exposing Brendan Depa to up to 30 years in prison. But his competency to stand trial will likely be an issue.
The State Attorney’s decision follows on the heels of cascading reactions in Flagler and across the country to the assault. On one hand the assault provoked outrage and revulsion at the violence of the act as depicted in the video, in a school hallway: the attack left Naydich unconscious as Depa continued to pummel her with close-fisted punches to the head and back. The mother of two was hospitalized, drawing outpourings of sympathy, and a GoFundMe account set up on her behalf had raised over $43,000 as of today.
“Please be comforted knowing she is home and recovering,” her daughter posted on the public page of the account a day after the incident. “This incident has reached areas of the world I never thought possible, with love and support pouring in from all. As her daughter, it’s heartwarming to see the community rally behind her recovery, near and far.”
On the other hand, because Brendan Depa is a student with special needs, whose emotional and behavioral self-control are in question, mental health and special education advocates have appealed for more measured reactions against the student. Because of federal privacy laws, the school district is barred from releasing any information about the student’s status, including whether he is in special education, though only special education students work with paraprofessionals at school.
Reportedly, the student is on the autism spectrum. He is also–in his own words, quoted in his arrest report–a resident at a group home, making him a ward of the state, possibly as a result of a parent losing parental rights.
Sue Urban, a mental health advocate in Flagler whose son Nicholas took his own life in 2018, soon after graduating from Matanzas High School, has spoken on behalf of Depa before the Flagler County School Board and in a video she posted on social media that has since been picked up by media outlets abroad, in tandem with accounts of the attack.
“By no means do I condone violence towards teachers in any way, shape or form, and I want to make that very, very clear,” Urban says in the brief video she took in her car, sending her best wishes to the teacher and stressing her support for law enforcement. With equal force, she said she was very upset “that this is being portrayed that this child is a threat, and that this is all on him. This is not this child’s fault. He is not a threat.”
She had implored the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office to remove a release it had posted on its Facebook page about the incident–by then the release had led to news reports about the incident in all local media–and called it not an issue with law enforcement, but “a mental health issue. This is a problem with our system. It is broken.”
Stephen Furnari, a Flagler Beach attorney who chairs the district’s Exceptional Student Education Parent Advisory Committee on Sunday described the State Attorney’s decision as “a very harsh stance.”
Qualifying his statement by noting the limited amount of information at this point, Furnari said: “If in fact the student had known behavioral issues, and if some portion of this was a situation at the school where the school district has some negligence because of some failure in their own system, then it would seem to me an overly harsh approach in terms of how to deal with this situation, from a legal perspective.”
The incident was the subject of discussion both at the end of a Flagler County School Board workshop on Tuesday and again at that evening’s business meeting of the board. The board has agreed, at the instigation of Board member Christy Chong, to discuss the possibility of opening–or rather re-opening–an alternative school for disruptive students. The district had just such a school for many years, but closed it a few years ago.
Charging Brendan Depa as an adult may placate a large segment of the public reaction demanding action against the student. But it comes with its own risks: an individual must be deemed competent to stand trial before proceeding. It is likely that his defense attorneys will immediately ask for a mental evaluation. Still: Absent a clear inability of the defendant to weigh the severity of the charges and understand court proceedings, Florida sets a very high bar for incompetency.
Matanzas Student Charged as Adult with 1st-Degree Felony in Assault on Teacher Aide | FlaglerLive
Brendan Depa Sentencing
A Florida judge sentenced a teenager with autism to five years in prison for beating a teacher’s aide unconscious, rejecting calls from the teen’s family and special needs advocates for alternatives to incarceration given Brendan Depa‘s age and disabilities.
Depa, now 18, pleaded no contest to aggravated battery on a school employee for the February 2023 attack on Matanzas High School paraprofessional Joan Naydich. The brutal attack was caught on school security cameras, generating national headlines and sparking debate over the appropriate punishment for a student with special needs.
The video showed Depa chasing Naydich down a hall, shoving her to the ground, then kicking and punching her in rapid succession. Naydich testified that a teacher’s talk of taking away Depa’s Nintendo Switch appeared to trigger his fury.
Flagler County prosecutors charged Depa as an adult, which meant he faced anywhere from probation to 30 years in prison. Because Depa was 17 during the attack, Judge Terence Perkins had the option of sentencing him as a juvenile to less time in a community-based setting, such as a group home or his parents’ home, or a juvenile facility, where he would have been released at age 21.
Depa’s adoptive mother, Leanne Depa, urged the judge to “let him come home with me,” pledging to keep watch over him and follow his treatment plan. The judge also heard from two men with backgrounds in working with children with special needs who reached out to Depa to offer support after learning of the attack. One of them, retired special education teacher Eugene Lopes, said he had seen significant progress and maturation in Depa since he started tutoring him in jail. Lopes and pledged to continue supporting Depa “for the long haul,” especially if he is sentenced to community-based options.
Paraprofessional and school community officer Jerome Powell, who has an adult son with autism, said he would be willing to adopt Depa and take him into his home if the terms of his release called for a residence in Flagler County since Depa’s parents live in Hillsborough County.
Expert witnesses for the state and the defense testified Depa’s attack was a manifestation of his autism spectrum disorder. They differed on the “intentionality” of Depa’s conduct and what type of setting would best serve Depa in helping him mature and manage triggers for his violent outbursts.
Dressed in an orange jail jumpsuit with his wrists cuffed, Depa sunk his head into his hands as the judge explained his reasoning before issuing his sentence: 60 months in prison followed by 10 years of supervised probation.
Perkins said he considered Depa’s age and disorder but was ultimately swayed into sentencing him as an adult by the “senseless, extreme violence” of the attack and other incidents in Depa’s past. Perkins also said he had “no confidence” that the juvenile system could provide Depa with “sufficient treatment” before his release in two years at age 21.
“He must be considered dangerous for the purpose of sentencing,” Perkins said. “This violence is related to issues outside his autism spectrum disorder.”
Flagler County prosecutors asked the judge to sentence Depa as an adult to seven years in prison with at least 10 years of probation, citing his history of violent behavior and the attack on Naydich. Naydich — who worked as a lunch lady for 17 years in Flagler County schools who became a paraprofessional in 2022 — testified in the hearing’s first day in May to the lasting affects of the attack, including five broken ribs, hearing, vision and memory loss, and the loss of a job she loved due to post-traumatic stress.
Despite years of close monitoring in group homes and in a class for students with special needs, Depa “has shown he is incapable of abiding by societal rules,” Assistant State Attorney Melissa Clark said Tuesday in her closing argument.
“Everyone wants to see Mr. Depa succeed but first we need to deal with what he did and there are consequences for what he did,” Clark said. “He almost killed a woman. He should be punished for that.”
Depa’s lawyer, Kurt Teifke, argued Depa’s age, disability and progress since his arrest suggested a community-based setting would best serve his needs.
Teifke called two expert witnesses to support his position. Autism disorders specialist Kimberly Spence said she believed Depa was “neurologically compromised” and a prison setting would not offer him the intensive, specialized treatment he needs on a consistent basis to grow and thrive.
“Incarcerating him will not change the factors that precipitated his behavior,” Spence said.
Spence said Depa’s school records indicated staff failed to recognize his triggers or employ recommended strategies from his behavioral plans on the day of the attack and in other instances. Naydich herself testified that she had not seen Depa’s behavioral plan or been made aware of his triggers or intervention strategies.
Forensic psychologist Dr. Julie Harper, who specializes in in juvenile brain development, said the smaller staff to person ratio in a juvenile facility compared to prison would make it a better placement for Depa.
“There’s plenty of evidence that he’s not operating at the typical level of 17- or 18-year-old,” Harper said. “He’s early on in treatment… and because he’s early on he has a lot of growth and changes to come.”
https://www.courttv.com/news/florida-teen-with-autism-gets-5-years-in-prison-for-school-attack
Brendan Depa Now
| DC Number: | S72124 |
|---|---|
| Name: | DEPA, BRENDAN J |
| Race: | BLACK |
| Sex: | MALE |
| Birth Date: | 08/22/2005 |
| Initial Receipt Date: | 08/14/2024 |
| Current Facility: | WAKULLA ANNEX |
| Current Custody: | MEDIUM |
| Current Release Date: | 02/19/2028 |