The lockdown was lifted around 11 a.m.

TIFTON — Seven students have been arrested and 11 were found to be involved after a fight broke out at Tift County High School around 8:30 a.m. on Sept. 20.

Tift County Schools Chief Communications Officer Stacey Beckham said that school officials and local law enforcement are investigating what happened and what caused the fight.

“It was a very quick fight,” Beckham said. “From everything we’ve seen so far there have been zero weapons involved. It was just some kids fighting. We were able to break it up very, very quickly.”

Beckham praised the quick reactions of staff and other students once the fight started for making sure it was contained quickly. She said that preliminary investigations indicated that the fight stemmed from another incident that happened between two groups in the community over the weekend.

“We knew it was brewing, and it broke out this morning in the hallways,” Beckham said.

The school remained on lockdown for approximately three hours. The lockdown was lifted at 11 a.m.

Beckham said that the school lockdown was not because of any ongoing danger.

“The reason everyone was kept on lockdown was because when you’re on lockdown, everybody’s stationary,” she said. “We know where everybody is and that’s the safest thing. When you’ve got people in and out and moving around, there’s no way to keep track of everyone. That’s our first priority, we want to keep track of everybody.”

Beckham said that keeping the students on lockdown made it easier to find students who may have had information or been involved and bring them in to be questioned.

“That’s why you stay on lockdown,” she said. “Not that there’s anything dangerous. It’s that we want to make sure that we get as much information and figure out as much as we can as quickly as we can. That’s just the safest way to do it.”

Beckham said that while she understands that parents are worried about their students, coming up to the school is not conducive to safety and incident resolution.

“When we’re in any kind of situation, whether that’s dangerous weather or some sort of threat, our first priority is to know where everybody is and that everybody’s safe,” Beckham said. “Having people we don’t know coming in and out is a safety hazard.”

She said that pulling faculty and staff away from taking care of the situation and ensuring student safety to deal with parents makes it more difficult to do either.

She said that the school system will continue to work with local law enforcement and the local community to try and “address the issues outside of the school so that they don’t come into school.”

Beckham said School Superintendent Patrick Atwater “assured us that the students that were involved will be punished to the full extent that our rules allow, and if they are of age and depending on their level of involvement, they then could look at criminal prosecution as well.”

She added that expulsion and permanent expulsion are within the realm of possibility.

“The school system takes this very seriously,” she said. “Anybody who disrupts a day or creates fear at a school, that’s not okay and we’re not going to tolerate that.”

Follow Eve Copeland on Twitter @EveCopelandTTG.

EDIT: Additional inquiries to Beckham about weapons being present during the fight were answered in the negative. She said that security footage of the fight have been reviewed extensively and that there were no weapons seen during the incident. The students who were arrested were searched and no weapons were found on their person or in their property.