A fight between students at a DeKalb County special education school on Tuesday triggered a chaotic emergency response after pepper spray was discharged on campus, sickening a school resource officer badly enough that he needed an EpiPen. Initial dispatch reports described a stabbing at Eagle Woods Academy in Lithonia, but district officials quickly clarified that no stabbing had occurred.
According to WSB-TV, the DeKalb County School District said the actual cause of the response was a student altercation in which pepper spray was discharged, not a weapon attack. The correction underscores how quickly fragmented information can spread during a fast-moving school emergency, before officials have had a chance to verify what actually happened on the ground.
The physical toll of the chemical agent extended beyond the students involved. A DeKalb County school resource officer who responded to the fight suffered an allergic reaction to the pepper spray and required emergency treatment with an EpiPen on campus, per FOX 5 Atlanta, which is also tracking the police activity at the school. That reaction explains why fire and medical crews were dispatched to the scene alongside law enforcement, since pepper spray can drift unpredictably in enclosed school hallways and affect officers and bystanders who were not part of the original altercation.
Fox 5 Atlanta separately reported that multiple suspects were arrested at or in connection with the school, though the district has not detailed the exact number of arrests or whether formal charges have been filed. It also remains unclear, per the station's reporting, whether the pepper spray was deployed by the responding officer or brought onto campus by a student — a distinction that matters because DeKalb's Code of Student Conduct strictly prohibits students from possessing pepper spray, mace, or similar chemical canisters on school property.
A School Built for Students Who Need More Support
Eagle Woods Academy sits at 5931 Shadow Rock Drive in Lithonia and serves DeKalb County students in grades 6 through 12 who require specialized educational and behavioral support, according to 11Alive. It is not a neighborhood high school but a dedicated center operating within the Georgia Network for Educational and Therapeutic Support, or GNETS, a state-administered framework that provides therapeutic and academic services to students with severe social, emotional, or behavioral disabilities, per the DeKalb County School District. Placement at facilities like Eagle Woods is determined through individual students' IEP processes.
The district splits its GNETS services by age, sending elementary students in kindergarten through fifth grade to the nearby Shadow Rock Center while older students in grades 6 through 12 attend Eagle Woods Academy, the district says. The two centers sit close together in the Lithonia area and together serve students from both DeKalb and Rockdale counties.
Not the First Time Pepper Spray Has Been Used There
Tuesday's incident echoes one from nearly a decade earlier at the same campus. On August 16, 2017, a public safety officer discharged pepper spray during a fight involving three students at Eagle Woods Academy, resulting in medical evaluation and student discipline, according to Fox 5 Atlanta. That earlier incident also prompted the school to be placed in what officials at the time called a safe and secured status.
DeKalb County School District policy dictates that school resource officers are trained to use oleoresin capsicum, or OC, pepper spray only as a last resort when other practical methods to break up physical fights have failed, according to reporting by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. District officials maintain the tactic reduces the risk of severe physical trauma during major fights, even as its use has recurred across several DeKalb campuses in recent years, including at McNair High School in May 2023, Towers High School in February 2022, and Stone Mountain High School in March 2017, the newspaper reported.
Broader Scrutiny of the GNETS Program
The incident also lands within a longer-running debate over how Georgia handles students with behavioral disabilities. In August 2016, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the State of Georgia, alleging that the GNETS program illegally segregates students with behavioral disabilities in violation of Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Federal prosecutors argued at the time that the state was unnecessarily isolating disabled students from mainstream educational settings.
DeKalb County schools have faced other campus safety controversies in recent months, including after a viral classroom beating video pushed one mother to pull her son from McNair High School. Whether Tuesday's fight at Eagle Woods Academy results in criminal charges, and how many students were ultimately arrested, remains unconfirmed as the district continues its review of the incident.
