A judge said the student, now 18, showed no remorse for the beating. His mother said he has mental health conditions and needs help.
A Florida student accused of beating a school employee unconscious after she confiscated his Nintendo Switch last year was sentenced to five years in prison Tuesday, court records show.
Brendan Depa, 18, pleaded no contest to one count of aggravated battery on an elected official or education employee, according to sentencing documents from the Seventh Judicial Circuit Court in Flagler County.
Depa, who was 17 at the time of the assault, was also sentenced to 15 years of probation.
I’m normally not one to champion extreme prison sentences, but 5 years really doesn’t seem like enough in this case. I remember seeing the video, and it’s clear that the kid has some major issues that aren’t going to be solved by a few years of prison time. He kept attacking her after it was clear she was already unconscious; whether it’s over a video game or not, that is not healthy behavior. Most people know, even in high-stress self defense situations, that once somebody is unconscious, you don’t keep attacking them. He had no issue attacking somebody he knew was completely defenseless. That’s sociopathic behavior.
Most people don’t come out as better people because prison does nothing to actually rehabilitate people, but I can’t imagine this doesn’t make him even worse. He needs to be hospitalized, otherwise in 5 years we’ll probably see his name in the news again.
I’d say prison and thearpy would be better. Those hospitals they send people to are in a lot of cases worse than prison because the people there have even less rights and there is even less oversight.
Correct. Imprisonment of a 17yo with mental health issues is guaranteed to make things worse. He needs psychiatric treatment and behavioral therapy, not caging, to become able to properly function in civilized society.
Prison life will only reinforce his violent impulses, making SURE that he’s fucked up for life.
Agreed.
How is this different from any violent criminal?
Zero pity for somebody beating a teacher who can’t fight back. At some point we gonna need to start dealing with this issue because whatever is going on right clearly is not working.
Why would anyone want to be a teacher in this clown ass society where the perp gets more sympathy then the public servant who was brutally beat and nobody did anything about it.
Y’all are fucking disgusting.
He has mental issues. Is it that you didn’t read or that you didn’t care?
Right. Guess that answers that 🤦
And what is going on right now is prison making the mental health and therefore behavior of offenders with mental issues MUCH WORSE.
Even if you have no empathy with someone who isn’t able to function properly acting out horribly, from a purely practical perspective of “let’s do something to prevent this kind of thing from happening again”, therapy is infinitely more effective than prison at that
Sympathy isn’t the point.
You said yourself that whatever is going on right now clearly isn’t working.
What is going on right now is that there’s only very few and expensive resources available to make sure that nothing like this horrific attack can happen.
Then when it DOES happen, they try to fix it by forcing the perpetrator into an extremely violent environment rife with abuse from fellow inmates and guards alike.
Then when that torture doesn’t help anyone, juvenile offenders become lifers and everyone gives up on them just like they do with the majority of adults who are imprisoned.
We have higher priority people for whom we can’t get any help… ie most homeless people are not visible and helping them would cost a lot less money per head.
No can’t do that… now you are suggesting state waste resources on this trash?
Y’all need to get some context and priorities straight. I don’t disagree with having a proper social policy but we don’t have that right now. So this clown goes to prison where they will beat him until he is unconscious and nobody will care.
Pity ended when violence started. Also I reviewed transcripts… this piece of shit really should have been taken out of school system earlier. The disregard for teacher safety in public education is beyond clown status. That’s the real issue here, not this trash being send to prison.
He said he wanted to kill her, should have been charged with attempted murder.
“wOrDs HavE MeAnInG”
Ignoring your fascist-sounding “higher priority people” for now, it’s not an either/or proposition.
The unhoused should DEFINITELY receive more and better assistance as well.
Ok, you’re sounding more and more bigoted by the sentence, I’m starting to reconsider engaging in the first place…
Yup, that’s about the amount of quite likely racially motivated dehumanizing I’m gonna put up with. Go fuck yourself.
yes we should waste resources because your opinion is that violent criminal is higher priority than working people who can’t afford rent lol
again we got the clown society we deserve with reasoning like this.
cheers.