Lucia Mar Unified School District Pays $10 Million After Bus Driver With Prior Conviction Molested Nine-Year-Old Special-Needs Student

In January 2017, a nine-year-old girl enrolled in Lucia Mar Unified School District's special-needs program began riding a school bus on a twenty-minute route with no other students aboard. The driver assigned to that route was David Lamb. When Lamb applied for the position, he concealed a 1998 misdemeanor conviction for peeping into an inhabited building, a disqualifying fact that did not surface during the district's hiring review. A transportation supervisor initially flagged concerns about his background but then directed Lamb to reapply through a separate process. The district hired him.

Over five months, from January through May 2017, Lamb used the isolation of the route to repeatedly assault the child. He would pull the bus off the road and park in secluded areas before abusing her. The assaults included showing her pornography on his phone and committing multiple acts of sexual contact against the girl.

On April 10, 2017, the girl's parents reported their concerns about Lamb's behavior directly to district officials. A transportation supervisor reviewed security camera footage from the bus and told the family she found nothing unusual. No corrective action followed. Law enforcement investigators later obtained that same footage and identified evidence of abuse that district personnel had dismissed without adequate review. Lamb continued on the route after the parents' complaint.

Lamb was arrested and charged with two felony counts of committing lewd acts on a child under 14. In April 2019, a court sentenced him to 16 years in state prison. He was transferred to Chuckawalla Valley State Prison, with parole eligibility set no earlier than April 2028.

The girl's family filed a civil negligence lawsuit against Lucia Mar Unified in 2018. Attorneys David Ring and Robert May argued the district bore liability on two independent grounds: it hired a driver whose falsified application concealed a discoverable criminal record, and after parents made a direct complaint backed by surveillance footage, district supervisors failed to act, allowing the abuse to continue.

COVID-19 related delays extended the litigation before a settlement was reached in May 2022. Lucia Mar Unified agreed to pay $10 million to resolve the family's claims. Ring and May stated the figure represented the largest individual sexual abuse settlement of its kind in California at the time. Lamb remained imprisoned on his criminal sentence as of the settlement date.