Deputy fired for taunting autistic boy

LARGO — Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri announced Friday he has fired a veteran school resource officer at Osceola Middle School in Pinellas County for berating and taunting a student who has autism.

The deputy, Ural Darling, had worked at the Sheriff’s Office since 1995 and had been the school resource officer at Osceola Middle since 2001.

Last year, Darling was credited with saving the life of a woman who collapsed at the school and had no pulse, administering CPR and using an automated external defibrillator until paramedics arrived. In 2011, he was selected School Resource Officer of the Year for the state of Florida. And his personnel file contained some 60 letters of praise from staff at Osceola Middle.

But Gualtieri said his behavior toward a 13-year-old student, Evan Dowdy, during a May 15 incident was unacceptable, and that he was unapologetic about what he had done.

The sheriff said Darling escorted Evan to the office of the school’s behavior therapist after the boy threw a book at a teacher. Evan, he said, has the cognitive ability of a first-grader and the communication level of a kindergarten student.

He said the officer kept the boy in the office for about 25 minutes, during which he berated him and told him to hold a stack of three to five books. He told the boy to throw the books at him, but when the boy complied, he ordered him to stop.

He said the officer taunted him with a pair of handcuffs, saying “This is what you’ve been wanting, right?”

He also told the boy that he would be put away in a mental hospital for the rest of his life if he threw a book again.

The incident was captured on an audio device that the boy’s mother, Megan Dowdy, had placed in his cargo shorts that day. Gualtieri said she planted the device because the boy had been acting out and she feared it was because of events taking place at the school.