Jury selection began this week in the trial of a Deltona mother accused of attacking a school resource deputy during a chaotic hallway confrontation at Deltona Middle School in November 2024. Dagmarie Aponte Iturrino, 46, faces charges of battery on a law enforcement officer and resisting with violence, and the trial is expected to last about two days.
The case stems from a visit Aponte Iturrino and her husband, Jorge Rivera, 47, made to the school after their 11-year-old son was handcuffed following an incident involving another student, according to WKMG. School officials had accused the boy of shoving a 10-year-old girl to the floor in a hallway, and the parents came to dispute the resulting civil citation, according to FOX 35 Orlando.
What began as a verbal confrontation turned physical, per the same account. Body camera footage reviewed by investigators showed Rivera pointing his finger in Deputy Julia Curtin's face, punching her in the head, and snatching her Taser after she swatted his hand away, while Aponte Iturrino pushed the deputy against a wall. Deputies say Rivera also knocked Curtin down during the struggle.
Deputy Suffered a Concussion Before Subduing Rivera
Curtin suffered a concussion in the assault but managed to regain her footing, draw her firearm, and order Rivera to drop the Taser before taking him into custody without firing a shot, the outlet's report notes. Jurors in Aponte Iturrino's trial are expected to see the body camera video of the confrontation as prosecutors lay out the case against her.
Aponte Iturrino and Rivera have said their son had been bullied and was defending himself. But school district and sheriff's investigators determined the boy was the initial aggressor and that the girl's flip-flop struck his backpack only after she threw it while calling for help, according to reporting tied to video footage of the incident.
Husband's 45-Day Sentence Sparked Sheriff's Outrage
The stakes surrounding this trial were shaped in part by what happened to Rivera. He pleaded no contest to robbery, resisting arrest, battery and grand theft, and in November 2025 Circuit Judge A. Kathleen McNeilly sentenced him to just 45 days in county jail with no probation, saying he had been triggered by the deputy's Taser. Sheriff Mike Chitwood publicly criticized McNeilly over the sentence, part of a broader clash detailed in a Volusia Issues Facebook post in which he called the judge unfit for office and urged voters to reject her in 2028.
Aponte Iturrino initially entered a no-contest plea of her own in August 2025. But in February 2026, McNeilly allowed her to withdraw that plea after she testified her former defense attorney misled her into believing her record could be sealed without jail time or a formal conviction, according to ClickOrlando. Aponte Iturrino claimed she did not fully understand her options at the time she entered the plea.
Self-Defense Claim Faces Steep Legal Hurdles
With her plea withdrawn, Aponte Iturrino's case moved toward the jury trial that opened this week. Her court filings cited Florida's self-defense statute, arguing she intervened in the physical struggle out of concern for her family's safety after the deputy unholstered a weapon, per FOX 35 Orlando's earlier reporting.
That argument faces a tough statutory landscape. Under Florida Statute § 784.07, battery against a law enforcement officer performing official duties is elevated from a misdemeanor to a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in state prison and a $5,000 fine, according to Criminal Attorney Orlando. Separately, resisting an officer with violence under Florida Statute § 843.01 also carries up to five years in prison, and Florida courts have held that civilians cannot legally use physical force to resist an officer carrying out lawful duties, per Hornsby Law Group.
Because the confrontation is documented on body camera video, the jury's verdict is expected to hinge less on disputed facts, and more on how the law treats self-defense claims against a uniformed school resource officer performing her duties. The trial follows unrelated legal trouble at the same school involving a different student last September, underscoring how much scrutiny Deltona Middle School has drawn from Volusia County law enforcement over the past two years.
