Left: Brendan Depa knocks paraprofessional Joan Naydich unconscious (Flagler County Sheriff’s Office). Right inset: Depa appears in court for sentencing on Aug. 6, 2024 (Seventh Judicial Circuit Court of Florida).
After a mother begged a Florida judge not to hand down a prison sentence to a student with autism who knocked out and then continued beating a teacher’s aide over a claimed threat to take away his Nintendo Switch, the court listened carefully to testimony for the rest of Tuesday and concluded that five years behind bars was the appropriate punishment.
Brendan Depa, who will turn 19 in approximately two weeks, had faced three decades of prison time for the attack on Matanzas High School paraprofessional Joan Naydich, an attack caught on school surveillance video which went viral and eventually led to Depa’s no contest plea, as an adult, to a first-degree felony charge of aggravated battery on a school employee.
Leanne Depa on the witness stand Tuesday testified that she adopted Brendan when he was 5 months old and that he’s “had a hard life,” struggling with autism, behavioral issues, trouble making friends, and prone to aggressive outbursts. She worried that a prison sentence would have dire consequences, that Brendan would be vulnerable to manipulative inmates behind bars and, ultimately, would not survive incarceration.
“I don’t think he’ll survive prison,” she said under questioning by Brendan’s attorney. “We want him to come home.”
This was a view consistent with the one surrounding a lawsuit filed in April with Florida’s Division of Administrative Hearings against the Flagler County School Board (that case appears to have been held in abeyance as of May, records shows).
In the lawsuit, Brendan was described as a “ticking time bomb” whose needs, despite “concerns and warnings,” were “completed disregarded” by the district.
The filing claimed that “actions and omissions” in the years before and the months after Brendan’s Feb. 21, 2023, attack on Naydich, led to the “violent incident” at Matanzas High School.
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.”
Authorities, citing video of the attack, said that Depa, then 17, could been seen “kicking” an “unconscious” Naydich and punching her “body and back of the head approximately 15 times” while she was on the floor. The sheriff’s office further said that Depa tried spitting at Naydich once EMS arrived.
But according to Depa’s lawsuit, school employees were well aware of his “disabilities, triggers and problem behaviors,” as well as other incidents where he was disciplined for threats, spitting, pushing an aide, “harassing and intimidating the school staff,” and for yelling 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 said, then describing Depa as “a ticking time bomb.”
“The paraprofessional did not follow the plans and did not utilize an evidence based strategy putting herself in a dangerous situation. An avoidable situation,” the suit claimed.
It was in this context that Leanne Depa has stated incarceration would amount to a “death sentence,” and she repeated that on Tuesday.
Leanne Depa testifies in court on Brendan’s behalf (Seventh Judicial Circuit Court of Florida)
Leanne said that she thought a house arrest punishment would be workable, as both she and her husband work from home. In addition, a resource officer Brendan has become close with, lives nearby and would take an active role in his life, she said.
“I beg you to let him come home with me,” she pleaded. “I want my son back.”
While Depa’s defense pushed the judge to sentence Depa to a juvenile justice home for two years, the state asked for seven years in prison, as he “almost killed a woman.” In the end, Judge Terence Perkins he could not ignore the “senseless, extreme violence” captured on video, violence by a 6’6″ and 270-pound student that left Naydich with several broken ribs, a concussion, and more.
“Compounding the senseless physical violence was the screaming of obscenities, spitting on Ms. Naydich both before and during the incident,” the judge remarked. “He pursued her down the hallway, pushed her so violently from behind that she flew through the air and was knocked unconscious when she landed in the hallway floor. He then proceeded to kick her, then jump on top of her, striking her in the head and body more than 15 times.”
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