A Springfield, Missouri man has been sentenced to 24 months in federal prison for threatening to bomb a San Luis Obispo County high school and kill the district attorney who once prosecuted him, years after that original case against him had collapsed. David William Platek, 43, admitted to sending hundreds of pages of threatening text messages describing a plan to build a fertilizer bomb, drive it to California, and kill the schoolchildren of Templeton High School along with District Attorney Dan Dow and his family.
A Grudge That Festered for Years
U.S. District Judge Megan Blair Benton handed down the sentence in the Western District of Missouri, according to the Department of Justice. Platek pleaded guilty to one count of making interstate criminal threats under 18 U.S.C. § 875(c), a federal statute that criminalizes transmitting communications threatening injury across state lines and carries a maximum sentence of five years, according to the Legal Information Institute. As reported by STLtoday.com, the maximum fine tied to the charge was $250,000, and the plea deal allowed Platek to avoid both a mental health evaluation and a trial.
The roots of the case trace back to 2018 and 2019, when the San Luis Obispo County District Attorney's Office charged Platek with felony identity theft after he allegedly created a fraudulent Facebook account impersonating local political activist Kevin Rice to post comments on a news website, per the San Luis Obispo County District Attorney's Office. Platek had previously provided technical services to local political campaigns before his arrest. Those identity-theft charges were eventually dismissed, with three additional counts dismissed with prejudice after proceedings that dragged on for more than three years, according to STLtoday.com's reporting.
Threats Escalated Through Text Messages
Rather than move on, Platek relocated to Missouri and, according to federal court filings cited by Cal Coast News, spent December 2023 sending an out-of-state friend roughly 125 pages of text messages describing a violent revenge plot against Dow. He described plans to rent a U-Haul van, construct a fertilizer bomb, drive to California, and launch a website titled with a threat against Dow's life. In one message, he texted about a large explosion in San Luis Obispo that would kill 200 people, mostly children, and said he would let surviving children live with the guilt of watching their classmates die.
The station's report also details how Platek posted a message referencing the Second Amendment in December 2023 and, at another point, changed his profile picture to Luigi, a Super Mario Bros. character — a name federal filings allege was also a reference to Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Platek described himself as a killer and said the schoolchildren were cheap and plentiful, according to the same account. He also said he had watched over Dow's family wherever they went. His own family believed he could carry out the threats, and his phone was taken away by relatives during winter 2023, per STLtoday.com.
Templeton High School Was the Target
The school at the center of the plot was Templeton High School, a public secondary school in northern San Luis Obispo County enrolling an estimated 725 to 740 students in grades 9 through 12 within the Templeton Unified School District, according to Niche. Dow's own children were enrolled there. Federal agents arrested Platek in Missouri in January 2024, before students returned from winter break, and he pleaded not guilty the following month. He was formally charged with interstate criminal threats and, according to STLtoday.com, has been barred from contacting Dow or his family.
Dow, who has served as San Luis Obispo County's elected district attorney since November 2014 and won re-election in 2018 and 2022, told the court he had never before appeared in his own courtroom as a crime victim. He and his wife, Wendy, delivered victim impact statements at the sentencing hearing. Dow said the threats exposed his family to fear, and he echoed statements from his wife, who said the threats prevented her from taking their children anywhere without law enforcement protection and that she and her kids should never have been targeted in the first place. Dow described his children as playful and cheerful, and said he would continue praying for Platek while adding that he hoped the sentence would help Platek realize the consequences of his choices.
What Comes Next
Platek was sentenced to three years of supervised probation following his prison term and is set to be released in January 2027. He has requested to serve the remainder of his sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution on Terminal Island, a male-only federal prison in Los Angeles, according to STLtoday.com. Federal prosecutors pursued the case under Operation Take Back America, a Department of Justice initiative formally established in early 2025 to direct federal task-force resources toward violent crime and public safety threats, per the Department of Justice.
The case fits into a broader national pattern of threats against prosecutors and judges. Data from the U.S. Marshals Service shows more than 500 targeted threat investigations involving protected judicial and prosecutorial officials were recorded annually in fiscal years 2023 through 2025, as the agency works to protect more than 30,000 federal prosecutors and court officers nationwide. Hoodline has covered similar federal threat cases in recent weeks, including charges brought under the same statute against a man accused of threatening a judge connected to the Apalachee shooting, and a separate case involving threats against television host Jeanine Pirro.
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