Brendan Depa autistic 6ft’6 black student weighing 270 pounds sentenced to 5 years jail for savagely beating Joan Naydich, Flagler teacher after she took away his Nintendo Switch game during class. How the system failed both student and educator.
A 6ft’6, 270 pound, autistic, Florida student caught on surveillance charging and brutally beating a high school teacher after she took away his Nintendo Switch video game last February was sentenced to 5 years prison.
Brendan Depa, now 18, was sentenced to the jail term by Circuit Judge Terence Perkins on Tuesday evening. His victim, Joan Naydich had requested the court issue the maximum punishment of 30 years.
As part of the former student’s punishment, Depa will also be mandated to 15 years probation following his release along with being placed in a group home according to court records.
Punished cause he is black and disabled? Or because he is a repeat offender?
Depa was charged with felony aggravated battery – bodily harm after he attacked paraprofessional Joan Naydich in a hallway inside Matanzas High School in Palm Coast.
The then-17-year-old, 6 feet 6 and 270 pounds, was seen on security footage sprinting toward the female educator, who turns and spots her assailant a split-second before he shoves her to the floor.
Surveillance tape shows Depa repeatedly stomping on the unconscious educator before punching her no less than 15 times.
Several staff members had to physically pry Depa from Naydich and hold him to the floor.
In October, Depa pleaded no contest to the charges. An original sentencing date, when he faced up to 30 years in state prison, was rescheduled after Judge Perkins said he needed to hear from more witnesses in May.
The teen, who has autism spectrum disorder, will serve his sentence in jail despite pleas from his mother and defense attorney.
‘They are punishing that he is black, they are punishing that he is large and they are punishing his disability,’ the teen’s adoptive mother, Leanne Depa, said after the sentencing.
Is the school to blame?
The parent had fought for her son to be held on house arrest as opposed to an adult detention center where he will be now forced to spend the next 5 years.
‘I think he needs help, and I think he needs treatment. 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 added, according to the Daytona Beach News-Journal.
Depa went on to call out the school for not properly handling her son’s disabilities.
‘I had told the school that being hungry was a trigger, that noise was a trigger, that being told ‘no’ was a trigger, that being corrected in front of other people was a trigger, and electronics was a huge trigger,’ Leann Depa said.
Depa’s attorneys had claimed that Naydich failed to address the autistic boy’s unique needs and wasn’t properly trained to handle him. It remained unclear how the boy came to be placed in a normal school environment and not an educational facility especially equipped to handle adolescents struggling with ‘problem’ issues.
Depa’s attorneys had argued he should be tried as a juvenile since he attacked Naydich when he was still 17, but Assistant State Attorney Melissa Clark argued the teen had a history of violence, according to WESH.
Educator and student both failed by the system?
Perkins agreed with Clark’s argument and said the February 2023 attack wasn’t an isolated incident and that Brendan Depa had numerous battery charges in the past, the outlet reported.
Naydich alleged that Depa had spat in her face and called her a ‘whore.’
In his sentencing, Perkins cited testimony from a state witness, a psychologist, who said Depa knew what he did was wrong.
Naydich, who first encountered Depa in January 2022, previously said she has PTSD and suffers from anxiety because of the attack. The attack has led to the former educator enduring psychological and physical wounds and unable to work.
Naydich said the worst injuries are internal and that the attack deeply affected her cognitive functions.
‘Unfortunately, a lot of my injuries that are not visible I’m going to have for the rest of my life,’ Naydich said during a May hearing.
Adding, ‘Brendan Depa’s actions that day has caused me to lose a job that I had for almost 19 years, lose my financial security, lose my health insurance.’
‘Like everything was taken away from me that morning,’ Naydich added. ‘At 10 o’clock that morning. Everything was taken away. My life will never be what it was before.’
Reflected one essay on substack: ‘The system didn’t fail Brendan or Naydich. It didn’t fail them when the school hired Naydich on a provisional basis before completing required special education certifications because they were short handed.
It didn’t fail them when Brendan’s IEP was ignored by other teachers at the school, leading to the events culminating in what happened to Naydich.
It didn’t fail them because the system did what systems do: benefit those most likely to contribute to the future of that system.
Brendan and Naydich don’t qualify.
That system makes decisions about who it will help.
Those it will move forward. And those it will spit out, left to their own devices.’
Depa can appeal his sentence in writing but was ordered to have no contact with Naydich and remain 500 feet away from her home and place of work.
Lawyers representing Depa have since filed a separate lawsuit against the school district for negligence, wherein they described Depa as ‘a ticking time bomb.’
