A phone call claiming there was a bomb on campus sent Lucerne Valley Elementary School students outside their classrooms Friday afternoon, triggering a swift response from San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies. School officials evacuated the campus out of an abundance of caution as investigators moved in to check the grounds.
Deputies responded at about 1:16 p.m. to the school in the 10700 block of Barstow Road, according to Sheriff’s spokeswoman Gloria Orejel, as reported by VVNG. The call reporting a bomb on campus prompted the evacuation, and school officials cleared the building while the area was checked out.
What Deputies Found So Far
As of the latest update, Orejel told the outlet that nothing had been found on campus. The investigation remained ongoing, with no further details released on the search or when students might be allowed back inside.
Lucerne Valley Elementary serves students from transitional kindergarten through sixth grade. The school describes its enrollment as approximately 440 students, offering a sense of the campus community affected by the evacuation; the figure is the school’s own approximate count, not an incident-day attendance total. The school’s profile also notes its STEM lab and student clubs.
The dossier’s record of the incident does not say who made the call, what exactly was said beyond the report of a bomb, or whether the threat has been deemed credible. It also does not include information on student or staff counts, injuries, or a formal statement from the school district.
A Familiar Pattern Across the Victor Valley
Bomb threats to education sites are part of a broader national pattern. The U.S. Bomb Data Center counted 3,148 reported bomb-threat incidents in 2024, including 1,037 targeting education facilities—the largest target category in its tally. The figures combine reports from the Bomb Arson Tracking System and TRIPwire, and do not indicate how many threats involved actual devices. The center’s 2024 explosives incident report also recorded 3,203 threats in 2023.
Phoned-in bomb threats have rattled Victor Valley-area campuses and businesses before, often with the same anxious waiting period before officials can declare an all-clear. In October 2025, Victor Valley Christian School in Victorville was evacuated after a bomb threat, even though classes weren’t in session that day — students who happened to be in the gym were moved to a field as a precaution. In that case, the Sheriff’s Department Bomb and Arson Unit searched the school, and no device was found, with the investigation reported as ongoing at the time.
A year earlier, in October 2024, The Gym in Victorville was evacuated after an alleged bomb threat forced a similar scramble. That incident wrapped up the next day, when the building was found to be safe and the business reopened. Not every threat plays out the same way, however. Back in February 2016, Sycamore Rocks Elementary School in Apple Valley was briefly locked down after threats came in over social media, with students evacuated while Apple Valley School District Police swept the campus — and in that case, officials ultimately determined the threat was not credible after completing the sweep.
For now, the outcome at Lucerne Valley Elementary remains unresolved. Sheriff’s officials have not announced whether the campus search has concluded or whether the threat will be classified as credible, and no information on a reopening timeline has been released.
California law makes knowingly reporting a false bomb threat a crime, whether the report is made to specified officials or maliciously communicated to another person. Under Penal Code section 148.1, the potential punishment can include up to a year in county jail or punishment under a separate sentencing provision. The law applies to reports known to be false; it does not establish that the Lucerne Valley call was false, and officials have not publicly identified its caller. The statute’s text sets out those provisions.
