Lebanon's Bomb Threat and America's Growing School Swatting Crisis

Written on 05/01/2026

ryan

By Ryan Sherrer | May 1, 2026

On Wednesday morning, April 29, 2026, at 10:50 a.m., a phone rang at the Lebanon Police Department. An anonymous caller claimed there was a bomb at Lebanon High School.

Within minutes, over 1,300 students, teachers, and staff were walking out of that building and onto the football field. Highway 64 near the school was shut down. Lebanon Fire Department, Mercy EMS, the Missouri State Highway Patrol, the Laclede County Sheriff's Office, the Laclede County Office of Emergency Management, Missouri State Capitol Police, and the Missouri Department of Conservation all responded. So did Military Police and bomb-detecting K-9 units from Fort Leonard Wood, one of the most sophisticated explosive-detection resources in the state.

For hours, this community held its breath.

I know because my child was one of the students standing on that football field. When it was over, we sat down and talked about what they saw, what they heard, and what they felt. That conversation is part of why I wrote this article.

What Lebanon experienced that day is happening all across America, and it is getting worse.

What Is Swatting?

Before we talk about what happened here, it helps to understand the term law enforcement uses for this kind of incident: swatting.

Swatting is when someone makes a false emergency call to police, reporting a bomb, an active shooter, or a hostage situation, with the goal of triggering a massive law enforcement response at a location where there is no real threat. The name comes from the SWAT teams these calls are designed to send.

For schools, the most common form today is a pre-recorded automated phone call. The same recording can be sent to dozens of schools across multiple states at the exact same time, using technology that hides the caller's real number and location. In many cases, no human being is even on the other end of the line.

This is not a new problem, but it has exploded in recent years. It started in online gaming communities in the early 2010s, where players would send police to each other's homes as a prank. It turned deadly in 2017, when a man in Wichita, Kansas was shot and killed after someone paid a caller $1.50 to falsely report a hostage situation at his home. The caller, Tyler Barriss, was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.

By 2023, swatting had become a mass tactic aimed specifically at schools. And in April 2026, it came to Lebanon, Missouri.

What Happened Here And Two Days Before in Georgia

"Safety always remains the highest priority in situations like this," Lebanon Police Chief Jerry Harrison said in a statement. "I want to thank the students, parents, and school staff for their cooperation throughout this incident. The school district did exactly what they needed to do on their end, and our law enforcement partners did the same on ours."

But here is something that caught my attention during my reporting: Two days before Lebanon's incident, on April 27, Bleckley County High School in Georgia was placed on lockdown after receiving a bomb threat. The FBI and multiple agencies responded. According to the Bleckley County Sheriff's Office, the early investigation showed the incident was "likely consistent with a swatting call or false report." Law enforcement also noted that the same call had first been routed to Middle Georgia State University before being transferred to the high school.

Multiple sources I spoke with, though I have not been able to fully confirm this on the record, indicated that the language, details, and structure of the threat made against Lebanon High School were nearly identical to the one made in Georgia two days earlier.

If that is true, it points to something important: Lebanon was not a local problem with a local solution. Lebanon may have been one stop on a coordinated national wave.

Lebanon Was Not Alone That Week

That same week, schools across the country were going through the same thing:

April 27, Bridgeport High School, West Virginia: evacuated, all-clear after sweep

April 27, Bleckley County High School, Georgia: lockdown, FBI responded, deemed likely swatting

April 28, Bozeman High School, Montana: entire school evacuated to the football stadium after a recorded bomb threat call described as "consistent with similar recorded swatting calls received by schools in the past"

April 29, North High School, Des Moines, Iowa: bomb squad deployed, call believed placed from out of state

April 29, Jefferson County, West Virginia: second consecutive day of threats; schools went virtual Friday; authorities said the call originated from an international number

April 30, Four high schools in Fresno and Reedley, California: hit simultaneously; investigators noted callers used spoofed numbers

April 30, Douglas High School, Rapid City, South Dakota: students dismissed early during sweep

That is at least 14 documented incidents across 8 states in a single month, and that list only includes what was picked up by local and regional news. The real number is almost certainly higher.

Who Is Doing This?

There is no single answer, but law enforcement and researchers have identified two main categories of people making these calls.

Outside actors, often far from your town

The first group has no connection to the school at all. These are individuals and organized groups who target schools at random, or sometimes in patterns, purely for disruption, money, or entertainment.

One of the most well-documented examples is a group called "Purgatory", which advertised swatting as a paid service online, livestreamed their calls, and according to a self-described leader, claimed to have made $100,000 from hoaxes. Federal prosecutors charged a juvenile connected to the group in April 2026.

Earlier that same week, on April 29, a Romanian man named Thomasz Szabo was sentenced to four years in federal prison for organizing swatting calls and bomb threats against members of Congress, federal judges, and other officials. He ran swatting operations from overseas.

Jefferson County, West Virginia authorities said this week that their bomb threats "are believed to be originating from an international number." Des Moines police said their call was "placed from out of state." These are not always local kids.

Calls like these are often pre-recorded using artificial intelligence voice technology, sent through internet phone services that mask the real number, and can hit dozens of schools in different states within minutes, all from one person, sitting at a computer, anywhere in the world.

Local actors, sometimes closer than you think

The second group is local. These are students, sometimes very young ones, who make threats to get out of a test, get revenge on someone, or simply because they think it is funny.

In Oconee County, Georgia, on April 21, a middle school student was arrested for emailing a bomb threat that evacuated four schools. In Greenville, South Carolina, on April 29, a 14-year-old student was arrested and taken to juvenile detention after making a bomb threat at their own school.

As national school safety expert Ken Trump explained, "There are two categories of threats — those that originate locally, where somebody has a grievance, and swatting threats that come from outside of the area." Both are serious. Both are crimes. And in the moment, law enforcement cannot always tell which one they are dealing with.

Why Every Single Threat Must Be Taken Seriously

Here is where some people get confused, and it is important to get this right.

The overwhelming majority of school bomb threats turn out to be hoaxes. In 2024, education facilities received 1,037 documented bomb threats according to the U.S. Bomb Data Center, making schools the single biggest target for bomb threats of any type of building in the country. In 2023 it was 1,123. The year before that, schools were again at the top of the list.

In all of those years, not a single swatting-style school bomb threat resulted in a confirmed detonation anywhere in the United States.

So why treat every call like it might be real?

Because the law enforcement officers arriving on scene have no way of knowing which call is the exception. They cannot see through walls. They cannot read minds. All they have is a threat, and a school full of kids.

The Educator's School Safety Network, which tracks school violence nationally, documented four real explosive devices found at U.S. schools and one actual detonation in a single school year. Those incidents did not come with a warning call. That is exactly the point. When something real is planned, the people planning it usually do not announce it ahead of time. The calls that do come in are almost always designed to cause the chaos of a response, not a real explosion.

But "almost always" is not the same as "always." And no school administrator, no police chief, and no parent wants to be the one who guessed wrong.

"Not taking it seriously even one time and it turns out to truly be a bomb, that is just not going to be satisfactory to the community," Lauren Shapiro, an associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told Axios.

That is not a hypothetical. In the 2015-16 school year, the most thoroughly studied year for school bomb threats, the Educator's School Safety Network documented four real explosive devices found at schools and one actual detonation. Out of 1,267 threats that year.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) puts it plainly in their official guidance: bomb threats are used to "disrupt, distract, and harass," and the threat itself can cause serious harm even without a single explosive involved.

And that brings us back to Lebanon.

The Cost Nobody Talks About

Every law enforcement officer who responded to Lebanon High School on April 29 was not responding to something else. Every hour of overtime, every K-9 deployment, every closed highway was a real cost to this community, and Lebanon is far from alone in absorbing it.

A single school bomb threat investigation costs between $25,000 and $40,000 in law enforcement resources. In fall 2025, a wave of swatting attacks hit 45 college campuses across the country, costing those institutions an estimated $62 million. In Lebanon, counting the Lebanon Police Department, the Missouri State Highway Patrol, the Laclede County Sheriff's Office, the Laclede County Office of Emergency Management, Fort Leonard Wood, Mercy EMS, the Lebanon Fire Department, Missouri State Capitol Police, and the Missouri Department of Conservation, every one of those agencies diverted personnel and resources for hours.

Beyond money, there is the human cost. More than 1,300 students and staff stood on a football field not knowing if they were safe. Parents saw alerts on their phones and did not know where their children were. Teachers had to stay calm for students while processing their own fear. The anxiety, the conspiracy theories, the days of unsettled community feeling that followed, those are real and lasting.

My child was out there. We talked about it. That conversation is something neither of us will forget.

The person who made that call may never understand the damage they caused. But Lebanon does.

What the Numbers Really Show

Here is an honest picture of where things stand, based on the most current government data available:

U.S. bomb threats to schools, recent years (ATF/USBDC):

2021: 1,876 total U.S. bomb threats; education facilities among top targets

2022: 2,358 total (up 35%); education, assembly, and office/business top three

2023: 3,203 total (up 26%); education facilities received 1,123 threats, more than any other location type

2024: 3,148 total; education facilities received 1,037 threats, still the #1 target

What those threats produced:

Actual school bombings: extraordinarily rare, and almost never preceded by a phone call

K-12 swatting incidents: 446 in the 2022-23 school year; dropped to 124 in 2024-25, a 72% decrease, likely due to tougher prosecutions

A critical note on the data: The ATF does not publish a clean breakdown of exactly how many school bomb threats resulted in a real device being found. That level of detail is not in their public reports. What is confirmed: no swatting-style school bomb threat has resulted in a confirmed detonation in the United States in the past five years. The threats have tripled. The actual danger from the threats themselves has not matched that rise. But that is only known after the fact.

What Needs to Happen

School swatting is not going to solve itself. Here is what experts say is needed:

Stiffer consequences. In West Virginia, making a bomb threat to a school is already a felony with up to three years in prison. Federal charges can add decades. In Missouri, penalties exist but awareness of them is low. When a 14-year-old in South Carolina gets booked into juvenile detention the same week Lebanon was evacuated, that sends a message. More of that needs to happen, and communities need to hear about it.

Better technology. Modern swatting calls use AI-generated voices, spoofed numbers, and overseas phone services. Laws written before these tools existed cannot prosecute the people using them effectively. Congress has been slow to act. States have started filling the gap, but a patchwork of 50 different laws is not the same as a clear federal standard.

A national database. The FBI launched a swatting reporting database in 2023. Law enforcement can use it to connect dots between incidents, like a nearly identical call made in Georgia two days before Lebanon. The more data shared, the faster patterns are identified and perpetrators caught.

Community honesty. One thing that feeds conspiracy theories after an incident like Lebanon's is silence. The more clearly officials can communicate, "this is what happened, this is what we found, this is why we responded the way we did," the less room there is for rumors to fill the gap. Transparency is not a weakness. It is a tool.

Conclusion

Lebanon High School's bomb threat on April 29, 2026 was almost certainly a hoax. The K-9s found nothing. The building was cleared. The students went home.

But "almost certainly a hoax" is not the same as "we knew it was a hoax." Nobody standing on that football field knew. Nobody searching that building knew. That uncertainty is the whole point. It is what the caller, whether they were a bored teenager or an organized group operating from overseas, was counting on.

This is happening in Montana, Iowa, Georgia, West Virginia, California, South Dakota, and Lebanon, Missouri. It is happening in towns where nobody expected it, in schools where students are just trying to get through a Wednesday. It is not slowing down on its own.

Every threat has to be taken seriously. Lebanon proved it can do that. Now the question is whether the rest of the country, lawmakers, prosecutors, and technology companies, will catch up before the next call comes in.

Sources

Local — Lebanon, Missouri incident:

KRCG TV: Lebanon High School students evacuated after reported bomb threat — https://krcgtv.com/news/local/lebanon-high-school-students-evacuated-after-reported-bomb-threat

KRCG TV: No credible threat found after evacuation at Lebanon High School — https://krcgtv.com/news/local/no-credible-threat-found-after-evacuation-at-lebanon-high-school

Ozarks First: Lebanon High School evacuated as law enforcement investigate threat — https://www.ozarksfirst.com/news/students-evacuated-lebanon-high/

KY3: Missouri Highway Patrol investigates anonymous threat at Lebanon High School — https://www.ky3.com/2026/04/29/missouri-highway-patrol-investigates-anonymous-threat-lebanon-high-school/

ABC17 News: Police: 'No credible threat' at Lebanon High School — https://abc17news.com/news/education/2026/04/29/police-no-credible-threat-at-lebanon-high-school/

Laclede County Record: Police find no credible threat in high school bomb scare — https://www.laclederecord.com/stories/police-find-no-credible-threat-in-high-school-bomb-scare,181878

Lake Expo: Lebanon High School Evacuated Due To Bomb Threat — https://www.lakeexpo.com/community/community_news/lebanon-high-school-evacuated-due-to-bomb-threat/article_883a6ff8-bd97-4380-8106-c911632d1a23.html

April 2026 national incidents:

WGXA / 41NBC: Bleckley County High School lockdown, Georgia — https://wgxa.tv/news/local/bleckley-high-school-on-lockdown-after-reported-bomb-threat-likely-false-report-local-news-crime-schools-in-middle-georgia-daniel-cape-bomb-threats-swatting-calls

NBC Montana / Bozeman Daily Chronicle: Bozeman High School evacuation — https://nbcmontana.com/news/local/bozeman-high-evacuated-after-potential-bomb-threat-school-safe-after-sweep

WeAreIowa: North High School, Des Moines evacuation — https://www.weareiowa.com/article/news/local/des-moines-north-high-school-bomb-threat-swatting-call-evacuation/524-592c6e2a-4ce2-4359-80fc-8ce3e07630f3

WV Public Broadcasting: Jefferson County Schools go virtual after two days of threats — https://wvpublic.org/story/education/jefferson-county-schools-go-virtual-friday-after-two-days-of-threats/

ABC30 Fresno: Multiple Central Valley high schools locked down — https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/multiple-valley-high-schools-locked-062149014.html

KOTA: Douglas High School, Rapid City — https://www.kotatv.com/2026/04/30/douglas-high-school-dismissed-after-reported-bomb-threat/

WDTV: Bridgeport High School, West Virginia — https://www.wdtv.com/2026/04/27/law-enforcement-investigating-bomb-threat-bridgeport-high-school/

Swatting — background, history, and perpetrators:

FBI Public Service Announcement on Swatting (2025) — https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/cyber/alerts/2025/threat-actors-use-swatting-to-target-victims-nationwide

National Association of Attorneys General — Escalating Threats of Doxxing and Swatting — https://www.naag.org/attorney-general-journal/the-escalating-threats-of-doxxing-and-swatting-an-analysis-of-recent-developments-and-legal-responses/

Washington Times: Romanian man sentenced for swatting spree — https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/apr/29/romanian-man-sentenced-4-years-prison-swatting-spree-targeting-dozens/

Westborough Daily Voice: Swatting group "Purgatory" linked to 10+ hoax calls — https://dailyvoice.com/ma/westborough/swatting-group-purgatory-linked-to-10-hoax-active-shooter-calls-at-us-universities/

Wikipedia: Swatting — history and case overview — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatting

School safety data and statistics:

ATF / U.S. Bomb Data Center: 2024 Explosives Incident Report — https://www.atf.gov/media/19821/download

ATF / U.S. Bomb Data Center: 2023 Explosives Incident Report — https://www.atf.gov/resource-center/docs/report/2023explosivesincidentreporteirpdf/download

Educator's School Safety Network: 2024–25 Violent Threats and Incidents in Schools — https://eschoolsafety.org/violence

Educator's School Safety Network: Bomb Incident Report — https://eschoolsafety.org/bir

CISA: Bomb Threats — https://www.cisa.gov/bomb-threats

Axios: Schools face rising threats of violence (September 2024) — https://www.axios.com/2024/09/24/bomb-threats-schools-closures-evacuations

PolitiFact: What we know about swatting incidents and victims — https://www.politifact.com/article/2025/aug/22/swatting-villanova-university/

Campus Safety Magazine: Surge in swatting incidents, 2025 — https://www.campussafetymagazine.com/news/surge-in-swatting-incidents-u-s-colleges-continue-to-be-targeted-by-false-active-shooter-reports/173172/

ASIS / Security Management: Amid Bomb Threats, Schools Seek Support — https://www.asisonline.org/security-management-magazine/articles/2023/01/amid-bomb-threats-schools-seek-support-and-resources/

All Lebanon incident details are drawn from official Lebanon Police Department statements and verified local news coverage. The similarity between the Lebanon and Georgia threats is based on reporting conversations and has not been independently confirmed on the record at time of publication. Statistics are drawn from official government sources as linked above.