Brendan Depa, the now-18-year-old former Matanzas High School student captured on surveillance video attacking his teacher’s aide 14 months ago, filed suit today against Flagler County schools, accusing the district of failing to properly address his numerous behavioral end mental disabilities, to properly train the staff in charge, or to provide legally required educational supports before and after his arrest. The failures led to a grave but foreseeable, violent incident, the lawsuit states, injuries to the aide, and the prospect for prison for Depa.
Depa was charged as an adult on a first degree felony count of aggravated battery of a school employee, to which he pleaded. He is scheduled to be sentenced by Circuit Judge Terence Perkins on May 1. He has spent the last 14 months between a juvenile jail in Jacksonville and the Flagler County jail, where he was transferred when he turned 18 last August.
He had an Individualized Education program through Duval schools when he was in Jacksonville. But when he returned to Flagler County, “Flagler County School District did nothing,” the lawsuit states. “No education has been provided to [Depa] since his return.” He has been receiving instruction through a private, volunteer tutor.
The felony charge carries a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison, though Depa is unlikely to be sentenced to anywhere near that much. The judge has discretion to sentence him as an adult or as a youthful offender.
Lawyers Maria Cammarata of Fort Lauderdale-based Cammarata & Cammarata and Stephanie Langer of Miami-based Langler Law filed the suit on behalf of Depa with the Florida Department of Education and the Division of Administrative Hearings, the first step of what would be a longer legal journey if the division does not rule in favor of Depa. The next step would be circuit court, and possibly federal court. But petitioners like Depa are required to exhaust all remedies before appealing to circuit or federal court. The lawyers are experts in disability and education law.
The lawsuit’s arguments are not a surprise: a series of reports since the arrest, several of them published here, have detailed what appeared to have been serious missteps on the school’s part in the management or mis-management of Depa’s education. But the complaint, which calls Depa before the arrest a “ticking time bomb,” for the first time details the extent and gravity of Depa’s behavioral problems, his chronic assaults of other students and staffers, whether at his group home or at school, his violence and extreme sensitivity to racial prejudice, and the lack of control by the school over him since he enrolled in 2021. It also details how long Depa went without an Individualized Education Program, and to what extent the IEP and his faculty team lacked either the will or the know-how to manage him.
“This is an ongoing problem. It’s not just Brendan, where there are a lot of families that are frustrated that their IEPs are not being followed,” Leann Depa, Brendan’s mother, said in an interview Wednesday evening. She had spoken with others who’d pulled their children from Flagler schools because their IEPs were not being followed. “This is happening to Brendan, but Brendan represents a lot of other kids who are in the same boat.”
Superintendent LaShakia Moore declined to discuss the matter this evening. “Once we receive the information, we will respond accordingly,” Moore said.
The school did not seem to have any control over Depa, who was “allowed to do whatever he wanted with little to no intervention or consequences,” the complaint states. “The district had the responsibility to intervene. If the plans in place were not working, they needed to be reviewed and revised. If the placement was not appropriate, the district had an obligation to change it. If the supports and services were not sufficient, the district had an obligation to increase or change them. To allow B.D. to continue to escalate only lead to the incident where the paraprofessional was harmed and B.D. was arrested. Had these issues been addressed in real time, B.D. would not have harmed the paraprofessional and would not have been arrested and facing significant time incarcerated.” (The lawsuit uses Depa’s initials throughout.)
The complaint is not flattering to Depa in the least. It is not intended to be: he had deep-seated problems. It documents his numerous outbursts, his habit of spitting on those who offended him, of threatening them with harm or death, and at times of attacking them physically and having to be restrained or repeatedly suspended.
But the suit also paints a school dismally shrugging its shoulders, applying cookie-cutter discipline, ignoring recommendations in the private reports of psychologists his parents submitted, delaying the development of his IEP and avoiding the rigors of behavioral management for someone like Depa, whose triggers were well known but not addressed. Depa has “a long history of trauma and mental health issues along with several diagnosis of disabilities that impacted him in the school setting,” the suit states. He’d been Baker Acted several times and spent a year in a residential program with 24/7 treatment and supervision before he was enrolled at Matanzas High School.
“He would run away, ignore directives, spit at adults and peers, and physically charge at people,” the complaint states. “He did receive a few days of suspension but discipline alone does not work to change problem behaviors. Discipline removes a student temporarily but does nothing to address the problem behaviors and provides no instruction on how to express oneself, regulate oneself or follow the classroom and school rules. The district’s failure to properly intervene is the reason the paraprofessional was injured and the student was arrested. The trajectory is clear. Had the district intervened at any of these points, would have prevented the eventuality of what occurred.”
After he enrolled at Matanzas in December 2020–he did not start attending until the following year–his mother submitted psychological evaluations about his previous settings describing his mood difficulties, problems with anger and anxiety, with emotional control, depression and other disorders. The reports recommended specific strategies, noting that “sources of anxiety and sadness need to be a core component of treatment.”
“It is not clear that the school district did anything with this report or its recommendations,” the lawsuit states. Nor is it clear why the school “did not place him in a more restrictive placement.”
He was almost immediately suspended after starting school in 2021 after threatening students and injuring an employee. A pattern was just as immediately set: more incidents, more assaults, a tendency to leave class, flout directives and rules and feel as if he could do whatever he pleased. “The trajectory is clear. Had the district intervened at any of these points, would have prevented the eventuality of what occurred,” the complaint states before detailing the February 21, 2023 incident involving the teacher’s aide, who discussed with a teacher disciplining Depa over his electronic game, all in front of other students. When he tried to defend himself, the lawsuit states, the faculty ignored him. He spat on the aide. She left the room apparently to lodge a complaint with the administration. Depa followed her, and attacked her.
“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. Its usage was sometimes allowed as a reward and in free time but sometimes it was not allowed. There was no consistency, and it would be confusing for any student, but especially B.D. It was a source of great problems and problem behaviors. This was never addressed in the student’s behavior plan and the private [psychologists’] documentation, concerns and warnings appear to have been completed disregarded by the district and staff working with B.D.”
The suit is technically filed by Depa himself, but it is primarily the work of his attorneys on behalf of Depa’s family, who are seeking a finding from the Division of Administrative Hearings, commonly known as DOA, that the district violated his rights under the federal Disabilities Education Act and that he was denied a was denied a free appropriate public education under the law known by its acronym, FAPE. The family is looking to have Depa placed in a proper environment–a behavioral therapeutic school–at the district’s expense, and reimbursement for expenses incurred so far, including legal expenses.
Leann Depa said in the interview this evening that she had put off the civil action for a long time to focus on the criminal case, which had originally been scheduled for Sentencing on January 31. It was twice rescheduled, as some witnesses were not available on earlier dates. Meanwhile the legal deadline for filing the civil action was approaching, making the filing necessary.
“This is nothing against Joan,” Leann Depa said, referring to the teacher’s aide. “This is against the district accepting someone who they didn’t have the resources for, and they didn’t provide the resources. I think it’s easy when you look at his history and you look at his size, they should have had other resources.”
