Posted on 04/27/2024 1:48:19 AM PDT by Morgana
An autistic Florida teen who knocked a school staffer unconscious for threatening to take away his Nintendo Switch has filed a lawsuit against the district, accusing them of failing to meet his needs.
Brendan Depa, 18, was just 17 when he was caught on video pummeling a teacher's aide, Joan Naydich, at Matanzas High School after she requested another teacher take away his gaming console.
Depa was arrested and charged as an adult with aggravated battery on a school employee, a first-degree felony carrying a potential sentence of 30 years behind bars.
The teen filed a request for due process hearing under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act on April 24.
It asks for a determination that Flagler County Public Schools’ actions before and after February 2023 led to the 'violent incident' to which Depa pleaded no contest.
In court documents reviewed by DailyMail.com, the teen's attorneys argue that school employees were aware of his 'disabilities, triggers and problem behaviors,' as well as other incidents where he was disciplined for spitting, shoving an aide, 'harassing and intimidating the school staff' and shouting at one of his teachers.
'It should be noted that the school and staff working with him and the district knew that the electronics, specifically the Nintendo and its use on a school campus was a trigger for escalating behaviors,' the filing reads.
It describes Depa, who stands at 6'6" and nearly 270 pounds, as 'a ticking time bomb' whose needs, despite 'concerns and warnings,' were 'completed disregarded' by the district.
The filing claims the attack on Naydich, a 59-year-old mother of two, was the result of a 'failure to address his needs or have staff around him with the proper training'.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
This time I'm on his side and agree with the lawsuit. Also that group home ought to be sued for making him attend school when they were warned.
Perhaps. But if he is a ticking time bomb, he needs to be kept in confinement.
It doesn’t sound like he will ever be any better.
Do I remember correctly that the teacher sued also?
Dang shame all around.
The ol’ attempted got-out-of-jail-free ‘tard card’. Feels desperate here though, doubt it works.
His parents put him in a group home. I don’t know how confined that is but it’s not out in public. Again the parents said “don’t send him to public school” and the group home did it anyway. Anymore “group homes” are the new nervous hospitals or State schools like Willowbrook of the past.
Honestly I don’t know what else the parents could have done? They really tried! There is just not a lot out there for these types of kids because 40 some years ago the government shut them all down.
Really?
I don’t agree that “his needs weren’t met,” and that gives him license to pummel the living snot out of Ms. Naydich.
Sorry. No sale.
Stupid do-gooder liberals pushed “mainstreaming”, and events like this are the result. He needs to be in an institution, not a public school.
I don’t buy into his victimhood.
Sounds like a no win scenario. Aren’t schools required to provide an education to autistic kids? If you don’t send him to school you get sued for denying him an education, if you do and he attacks someone you’re sued for not “meeting his needs”.
I know a woman who is a Special Ed teacher. She has told me what she has to do to deal with some of these kids. She has a lot more patience that I would have. There is a lot of rules, red tape and paper work for each kid.
My honest opinion? These kids should have never have been mainstreamed. If you are old enough to remember they had special schools for kids like this guy. Schools where the kids lived year round.
They did away with those places now we have this. Some how this is better? A teacher attacked, kid going to jail and this is better? Back in the day at those special schools had Orderlies that if he, or other kids got violent those grown ass men the size of NFL linebackers would have hauled their ass to a padded cell till they calmed down. Again, some how that was bad and this is better?
No are schools have not improved, only become more cesspools.
The schools have taken on responsibilities AND THE MONIES of caring for the developmentally limited and mentally ill. They wanted it. The group home gets no fund to care for the patient at home during school hours.
The faster we return to regional institutions and heavier medications the better. For the other option is to kill them.
“Sounds like a no win scenario. Aren’t schools required to provide an education to autistic kids? If you don’t send him to school you get sued for denying him an education, if you do and he attacks someone you’re sued for not “meeting his needs”.”
Because it is no win. See my post 10. His adoptive parents were homeschooling him, but he got too violent for them to handle. What does that tell you?
His parents knew he was violent and you mean to tell me no one in that group home ever saw the same freaking thing? The guy lived there. I know they saw it yet they sent him to school and put others in harms way.
We all know what problems the public schools have. I mean let’s be honest here, our schools are already a hot mess and someone thought it was a good idea to send a violent autistic child there? It was like throwing a Tasmanian Devil into the classroom then wondering why afterwards someone was attacked.
“The schools have taken on responsibilities AND THE MONIES”
No no no..okay you got the second part correct. They took the money. Oh they love that money when it comes to special needs kids. “Responsibilities” oh that is Greek to them.
Sadly, this kid is basically an obsolete farm worker. He should be in prison because I don’t buy “autism leads to violence” It never did before “Rain Man.”
“I don’t buy “autism leads to violence” It never did before “Rain Man.””
Problem is he may have more than autism. He was adopted remember. Maybe he was also a crack baby or something like that, we don’t know.
schools should not be forced to take on someone elses problems, period.
he did it again?
“This time I’m on his side and agree with the lawsuit.”
Wow. This early in the morning, it is hard to encounter someone so gutless and stupid as to make excuses for a feral animal to ground and pound a helpless woman who was enforcing school rules that he knew beforehand.
What the adults did wrong was let him get away with anything all his life and then hired a lawyer to sue.
His right punishment would be to put him in the ring and let one of those MMA fighters give him a dose of his own medicine.
I used to be married to a Special Ed teacher. I know zll about it.
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