A 5-year-old boy with autism was thrown into a shelf during a therapy session at a Johns Creek autism center, according to police and his family, in an incident caught on surveillance video that the center initially described only as an accidental fall. The therapist, Jacob Lameiras, has been arrested and now faces felony charges of aggravated battery and second-degree child cruelty.
The boy had attended Pathways Autism Center's Johns Creek location for the past two years, as reported by WSB-TV. The clinic sits at 11030 Jones Bridge Road, Suite 310, according to Pathways Autism Center, which operates several facilities across Metro Atlanta offering one-on-one Applied Behavior Analysis therapy, social skills groups, and skill assessments for clients from birth to adulthood. After the incident, the center called the family and reported that the boy had simply slipped and fallen, suffering a deep cut to his forehead, WSB-TV reported.
The boy's grandmother, Daniell Carroll, said the center refused — twice — to show his mother the surveillance footage. The boy's mother, Diamond Boyd, eventually recorded the video herself once the center finally allowed her to view it, per the station's report. Boyd said she felt angry, disappointed and upset after seeing what happened to her son.
Grandmother Says Video Shows Therapist Threw the Child
Carroll said the footage shows the therapist throwing the child, not a fall, and that the outcome could have been far worse. The boy reportedly pulled away from Lameiras before sessions, a detail relayed by the family as part of their account of his behavior toward the therapist. The family ultimately called police themselves after the center, according to the family, refused to do so.
Police reviewed the surveillance video and arrested Lameiras, who faces charges of aggravated battery and second-degree child cruelty, the station reported. Under Georgia law, aggravated battery is a felony involving malicious bodily harm that seriously disfigures, deprives, or renders useless a member of the victim's body, carrying a sentence of 1 to 20 years in state prison, according to Georgia Code. Second-degree cruelty to children is defined as causing a child under 18 cruel or excessive physical or mental pain through criminal negligence, and carries a penalty of 1 to 10 years. Lameiras was released on a $15,000 bond, per the same account.
Center Says Video Review Showed No Unprofessional Behavior
Pathways Autism Center said the incident was an accident and conducted a random sampling of video of Lameiras working with clients, finding no unprofessional behavior in what it reviewed, according to the report. The center's owner did not respond to a request for comment from WSB-TV reporter Tom Jones.
Lameiras's attorney, Matt Acuff, said his client was fired and has never harmed a patient, adding that Lameiras himself has autism. The family's attorney, Sharese Shields, said the family plans to pursue legal action against Pathways Autism Center and intends to hold the center liable.
State Oversight of Therapy Paraprofessionals
The case raises questions about supervision standards inside Georgia's growing ABA therapy industry. In 2022, the state passed House Bill 412, enacting O.C.G.A. § 43-7A, which established licensure for applied behavior analysis practitioners and defined behavior technicians as paraprofessionals required to work under the direct supervision of a licensed behavior analyst, according to the Georgia General Assembly. National credentialing standards set by the Behavior Analyst Certification Board require a Registered Behavior Technician to complete 40 hours of qualified training, pass a competency assessment, and remain under ongoing oversight by a Board Certified Behavior Analyst.
The stakes of that oversight are magnified by how many Georgia families rely on services like these. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention surveillance data released in April 2025 found that roughly 1 in 31 eight-year-old children nationally — about 3.2 percent — are identified with autism spectrum disorder, with a rate of 32.6 per 1,000 children in Metro Atlanta, one of the CDC's long-term autism tracking sites.
Lameiras's initial appearance and bond proceedings would fall under the Fulton County Magistrate Court, which handles first appearances for felony arrests made in Johns Creek, with male detainees typically processed through the Fulton County Jail system on Rice Street in Atlanta. It remains unresolved whether the center's internal video sampling covered the specific session in question, and the center's owner has not addressed that question publicly. As the criminal case moves forward, Lameiras is presumed innocent of the charges against him.
