Mental health advocate launches furious defense of 6’6” thug, 17, weighing 270lbs who had to be dragged off unconscious female teaching aide
- Sue Urban, who has a special needs stepson at the school, said the child, 17, of Palm Coast, should have been taken to a mental health facility, not jail
- ‘This is not just a thug,’ she told DailyMail.com. ‘People need to be educated on children that have ESE [Exceptional Student Education]’
- The child severely beat a teaching aide on Tuesday after she took his Nintendo Switch console away. He has been charged with aggravated battery
A mental health advocate has launched a furious defense for the 6’6″ boy, 17, who attacked and knocked a teaching aide unconscious after she took his Nintendo Switch away from him.
Sue Urban – whose 17-year-old son graduated from Matanzas High School before taking his own life – has responded to the incident where a 17-year-old special needs student, who weighs 270 pounds, attacked his teaching aide on Tuesday.
Neither the student nor the teaching aide’s names have been released publicly.
‘This is not this child’s fault. He is not a threat,’ Urban said in an emotionally Facebook Live. ‘This is a mental health issue. This is a problem with our system, it is broken.
‘That post needs to be removed from the Flagler County Sheriff’s website immediately.’
Urban, who also has a stepson in the same behavioral wing as the boy in the video, told DailyMail.com this special wing is for ‘children that are not in the general population of the high school,’ and that her son and the boy were ‘school friends,’ but in separate classes.
‘This is not just a thug,’ she told DailyMail.com. ‘People need to be educated on children that have ESE [Exceptional Student Education]. They should also be educated on impulsive aggression behavior, and that most times these children do not understand the consequences of the behavior.’
She also told DailyMail.com that the child lived in a group home and his mother did not live in Flagler County, which a faculty member told her at the school board meeting on Wednesday night.
In a Facebook Live, Urban, who became a mental health advocate after her son’s death, continued: ‘That child has mental health issues. He is just that, a child.’
‘That teacher – that paraprofessional – should have never been left alone in a situation where she could have been attacked.’
Urban said she is ‘sick of these kids being labeled as a threat.’ Many have taken to social media to call for jail time for the student – who has been charged with a juvenile felony for aggravated battery – and to call the boy an ‘animal.’
He is currently in the custody of the Department of Juvenile Justice and could face up to five years for the attack.
‘That child should not have been transported to jail, he should have been transported to a mental health facility,’ she said on Facebook Live. ‘Please stop labeling this child as a monster. Yes, his size is a big factor, [but] he did not know he was doing wrong.
‘These kids are given extra attention in those classes. They are given leeway to have these devices, so when they do lose their tempers or if they do get into that mental space, that they can have those Switches or phones or their comfort devices, [so] that they can calm down.’
However, many do not agree with Urban’s position.
Kimberly Rosania told DailyMail.com that ‘one of the reasons I’m being so vocal is [their identities have] not been released. I care more about whether an innocent woman than I do a predator.’
She also claimed in a Facebook post that the school board ‘defended this behavior and this animal.’
‘Claiming his disabilities are and should keep him protected, this is insanity! If he was not stable enough to value human life over a $300.00 video game why was he among innocent lives to begin with? Why were those lives less valuable than his education? This a broken system!’
Another woman, Karen Puca, said the video was ‘concerning’ and said she would ‘love to hear how the MHS leadership is handling such nonsense’ as several have reported there were more fights this week.
Urban confirmed to DailyMail.com that a lot of fights happen at the school and that the school’s leadership needs to do better.
