Teacher cleared, students disciplined after Lithia High School fight video emerges
DOUGLAS COUNTY, Ga. - It's a video that's getting a lot of attention on social media. A fight breaks out between four girls in a hallway at Lithia Springs High School.
In a portion of the video, you see a male teacher lying on top of the students with his arm around her neck. Police don't feel the teacher is in the wrong, nor will they charge him.
The video circulating online is only 18 seconds, the fight was longer than that. And the sheriff's office says the public doesn't have the full version.
The Douglas County Sheriff's Office shared the 18-second Facebook video with FOX 5.
"I'd like our community to understand 18 seconds is only a portion of it. We've looked at school camera video, we've interviewed witnesses, we've also looked at several other videos - it's pretty apparent real quickly. When this teacher got involved he really quickly found himself overwhelmed . He got pushed around, shoved around, he fell to the ground several times," said Sgt. Jesse Hambrick,
Sgt. Hambrick says the teacher did nothing wrong. He simply tried to stop a fight.
"What people don't understand is as that's going on, you're not really able to, he's not sitting there thinking about things. And he's just grabbing a hold of this young lady. And his arm ends up around the upper part of her chest and throat for a split second," said Sgt Hambrick.
The other question people want answered, why were these girls not arrested?
Sgt. Hambrick says the sheriff's office says it's a misdemeanor fight, with no injuries. They will let the school administrators take the lead
"Every case we're going to look at by case by case. I can't say we're going to arrest or not arrest every kid that fights in school system but we don't want our kids to end up in the judicial systems because they got into a school house fight," said Sgt Hambrick.
The district adds, that at no point did the teacher injure any of the students. We do know the schools camera caught the fight in it's entirety. We've asked for that video from the school district, but the district has not responded to our request.