ABA Therapist Charged With Battery After Video Shows 5-Year-Old Client Thrown Into Shelf

A Two-Year Client, an ‘Accident,’ and a Video the Center Withheld

JOHNS CREEK, GEORGIA — A surveillance camera inside Pathways Autism Center recorded a moment the center initially described to a client’s family as a fall: a 5-year-old boy thrown into a storage shelf by his therapist, left with a gash to his forehead deep enough to require stitches.

The child had attended Pathways, an applied behavior analysis provider with locations in Johns Creek and Marietta, for two years. His family says he had begun pulling away from the therapist, Jacob Lameiras, before sessions in the period leading up to the incident. When the center called the boy’s parents, Diamond Boyd and Antonio Martin, staff said their son had slipped and fallen. Boyd, who communicates via sign language, told WSB-TV’s Tom Jones she was “angry,” “disappointed” and “upset.” Martin said he was “very disappointed and shocked.”

The boy’s grandmother, Daniell Carroll, said the center refused the mother’s request to see the surveillance footage twice before relenting. When staff finally showed Boyd the video, she recorded it on her own device. The center maintained, even after the family viewed the footage, that the injury was accidental.

“No, it was not. He threw my grandchild. He threw him. Everyone wants to say pushed. He threw him.” — Daniell Carroll, the child’s grandmother (2026)

The family says the center still would not call police, so they did. Officers reviewed the video themselves and arrested Lameiras. He faces charges of aggravated battery and second-degree child cruelty. Carroll said the outcome could have been far worse: “He could have killed my grandbaby.”

A Felony Charge, a $15,000 Bond, and a Disputed Employment Record

Lameiras was released on a $15,000 bond after his arrest. Pathways fired him following the incident. His attorney, Matt Acuff, told WSB-TV that Lameiras also has autism and has never harmed a patient he has worked with. Acuff said the center conducted a random sampling of Lameiras’s session recordings with other clients after his termination and found no unprofessional behavior in that review.

The family’s attorney, Sharese Shields, said the family plans to pursue legal action against the center itself, not only the individual therapist, arguing Pathways attempted to obscure what the video showed before police became involved.

“We’re going full steam ahead and holding the center liable.” — Sharese Shields, attorney for the family (2026)

A Channel 2 reporter went to the Johns Creek center seeking comment from the owner, left a phone number, and had not received a call back as of the station’s report. Atlanta Black Star, which also covered the case, reported that a search of public records turned up no prior civil lawsuits against Pathways Behavioral Consulting, LLC (the entity that operates the center) and no complaints on file with the Better Business Bureau. The company, described on its Instagram as family-owned, has been registered in Georgia since 2014.

What the Case Raises for ABA Providers on Reporting and Liability

The regulatory question: Georgia’s mandated-reporter statute, O.C.G.A. § 19-7-5, names licensed physicians, psychologists, professional counselors, social workers, and marriage and family therapists, along with school and law enforcement personnel, as required to report suspected child abuse. It does not name behavior analysts or ABA technicians individually, but it does include a broader category: “child service organization personnel,” covering employees of organizations that provide care, treatment, training, or supervision to children. A center employee’s alleged refusal to contact law enforcement after reviewing video evidence of a client’s injury falls within that ambiguity. Under the statute, a knowing and willful failure to report by a person required to do so is a misdemeanor.

For providers, the more immediate exposure is procedural rather than statutory. It speaks to how quickly a family is shown incident footage, whether an internal “no unprofessional behavior found” review is treated as a substitute for a report to police or child protective services, and whether front-line staff are authorized to characterize an injury as accidental before any outside review occurs. Each of those decisions becomes evidence in exactly the kind of civil claim the family’s attorney has now said she intends to file.

The case also lands amid heightened public attention to how ABA centers, many of them small, independently owned operations like Pathways alongside the sector’s growing number of private-equity-backed chains, handle allegations of client mistreatment, and how quickly that handling becomes part of the public record regardless of a provider’s prior compliance history.

AT A GLANCE

SOURCES & REFERENCES