Excuses..Excuses..Excuses! On Friday, April 26. 2024, Law and Crime News published this headline, “‘A ticking time bomb’: Student with autism who attacked teacher’s aide over threat to take away Nintendo Switch sues school district, says ‘triggers’ ‘were ‘well known’, but ignored.”
An 18-year-old Florida high school student with autism facing potential decades of prison time after beating a paraprofessional unconscious for threatening to take away his Nintendo Switch filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the district for failing to meet his individual educational and behavioral needs.
Brendan Depa’s filing, styled as a request for due process hearing under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, asks for a finding that Flagler County Public Schools’ “actions and omissions” in the years before and the months after the Feb. 21, 2023, attack on Joan Naydich, led to the “violent incident” at Matanzas High School that was caught on video and, in turn, led to Depa’s arrest and prosecution as an adult.
Depa, 17 at the time, was charged with aggravated assault and pleaded no contest to the first-degree felony charge of aggravated battery on a school employee, punishable under Florida law by up to 30 years. His mother, Leanne Depa, would , has said that incarceration would amount to a “death sentence.”
When news of the case first emerged, the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office said Depa attacked Naydich because he was “upset that [she] took his Nintendo Switch game away from him.”
“Depa made statements that he will beat her up every time she takes away his game,” the sheriff’s report detailed.
In the aftermath, Naydich said that she “never took the Nintendo Switch from him,” and that any such claim was “misinformation.
“Animals belong in cages”, said Thomas Robb, the National Director of the Knights Party of the Ku Klux Klan, centrally based in Harrison, Arkansas. “Why is it that everytime a black person commits a vicious and brutal crime, mental illness is brought up as a defense? If your neighbors pitbull came into your yard and killed your child, how would you feel if the veterinarian said the dog shouldn’t be euthanized because it has a mental illness? Some may say ‘well it’s only a dog’, this is true, but when White American citizens are forced to be around races that are known to have low IQ’s and bad temperaments, it’s the same as subjecting us to wild dogs. Both kill for no reason. If this student was so deranged, why was he even in a public place with just one teacher to control him? By his own defense, he is saying that everyone knew his triggers, so he should be given leniency because he’s mentally ill. They knew he could possibly attack just by someone giving him instructions. Does this sound like someone that should be roaming our streets? This thug didn’t care if he killed his teacher over a simple game! In my opinion, he shouldn’t just be tried as an adult, he also deserves a death sentence. We need to send a stern message in America that mental illness is not an excuse. Maybe in the jungles of Africa, but not in the United States.”
