Police and GBI investigators swarmed a DeKalb County high school Thursday afternoon following a shooting involving a police officer and two men in the parking lot, authorities said.
The shooting happened about 3 p.m. after a Lithonia High School employee noticed two men on campus who weren’t supposed to be there and repeatedly asked them to leave, the GBI said in a news release. A school resource officer was alerted and approached the men, who were sitting in a vehicle outside the school.
As the officer approached, the driver put the car in reverse and backed out of a parking space, striking several cars in the process, according to GBI spokeswoman Nelly Miles.
“The driver then drove the vehicle toward the officer,” Miles said, prompting the officer to shoot into the car.
The bullet grazed one of the men sitting inside and the driver stopped in the parking lot. He was taken into custody by the school resource officer and a DeKalb County police officer helped arrest his passenger, Miles said.
The man grazed by the bullet was treated at the scene and a gun was found inside the car, she said. Charges are expected against both men, but neither of their names have been released.
School officials said no students were injured in the on-campus shooting, but it’s unclear how many students witnessed the incident.
“At this time, there are no known injuries to any of the witnesses in the vehicles that were hit by the man’s vehicle,” Miles said, adding there were students in the parking lot during the shooting.
The incident is the 61st officer-involved shooting the GBI has been asked to investigate this year, matching the pace of law enforcement shootings from 2020 in Georgia. It is the fifth such shooting this month.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution also tracks officer-involved shootings that don’t involve the GBI, and those numbers sometimes differ from the GBI’s tally.
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