Man threatens to kill SLO County District Attorney, headed to trial

September 3, 2025

By KAREN VELIE

Fueled by revenge, David Platek threatened to kill San Luis Obispo County District Attorney Dan Dow and his family and then explode a bomb at Templeton High School with a goal of killing 400 children. A friend revealed the plot, federal agents arrested Platek, and a judge set an October trial date.

Federal agents arrested Platek on Jan. 2 in Missouri and booked him in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles. In July, the charges in California were dismissed and then filed in Missouri, where the documents reveal Dow was his target.

Platek detailed his plan in writing to extract retribution over his 2019 arrest after he allegedly impersonated a local activist who pointed out the misdeeds of then-San Luis Obispo County Supervisor Adam Hill and Hill’s allies. Platek focused his rage on Dow who investigated his criminal impersonation.

“Everything I’m told says killing kids is the most pain I can inflict, and I have the right to fight back against the people who did this to me. A primal right,” Platek wrote. “Bullets are cheap and children are plentiful.”

“SLO wants to destroy my life, I’ll blow up one of their schools,” Platek added.

Over the past eight months, Platek’s attorneys made mutiple attempts to have him released on bail while federal prosecutors have argued for his ongoing incarceration.

“Defendant has a vendetta against the prosecutor who charged him with identity theft,” according to court records. “That was years ago, and that’s what makes the specific facts of this case particularly dangerous. It went through the process, the charges were dropped, and five years later he’s saying, I’m going to kill this person in front of their family.”

Platek is facing four charges of making interstate threats of torture and kidnapping. He could also face an enhancement for threats against an elected official. His trial is scheduled to start on Oct. 20.

The SLO County District Attorney’s Office charged Platek in 2019 with felony identity theft tied to his work as a political consultant. Platek, a software engineer, provided information technology services to Hill and several other candidates for local offices.

Local activist Kevin Rice regularly criticized Hill and his allies in the comment section of the SLO Tribune, a news source that generally posted glowing articles about Hill.

In 2018, Platek created a Facebook page identical to Rice’s page. It included a photo of Rice. Platek, pretending to be Rice, made a comment about a Tribune article about a convicted sex offender, saying that he (as Rice) had also had sex with children, and it was not all that uncommon.

Almost immediately after Platek posted on the Tribune as Rice, Aaron Ochs, a local troll known for spreading misinformation on behalf of Hill, wrote on his Facebook page that Rice admitted to being a sex offender.

The District Attorney’s Office mounted an investigation that uncovered Platek’s role in attacking Hill’s critics. SLO County prosecutors filed two counts of felony identity theft and one related misdemeanor charge against Platek in Sept. 2019.

Hill committed suicide in 2020 after FBI agents raided his county office. Without Hill’s testimony in the identity theft case, the San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s office dropped the prosecution against Platek.

Platek claimed that the publicity surrounding his arrest ruined his professional career. He referred to his “underemployment” and Google search results that offered information about his arrest when he explained his reason to kill Dow, his family and schoolchildren.

From Dec. 7, 2024 through Dec. 16, 2024, Platek sent dozens of texts to an acquaintance regarding his plans for revenge while also sending threats via social media to Dow.

Platek planned to rent a van and make a bomb from explosives and fertilizer, he texted. He would drive from his home in Missouri to San Luis Obispo County and, after killing Dow, he would explode the bomb at the school the prosecutor’s children attended – Templeton High School.

“I’d let the prosecutors children live,” Platek texted. “I’d wait for a sick day, let them live with the guilt of watching their classmates die because their father is corrupts [sic].” But in another text, he described how he would leave the prosecutor “surrounded by the bodies of his “family on a Christmas day.”

“I suddenly understand the mind of the worst people: they go into those schools because they know it will leave a permanent hole in people. It’s making way to [sic] much sense to me,” Platek texted around Dec. 9, 2024, adding, “It’s making way to [sic] much sense to me. It would be more fitting to leave the prosecutor and those responsible alive in an aftermath to explain what happened.”