A Missouri man threatened to bomb a San Luis Obispo, California, school and kill at least 400 people, including a local elected official he was targeting in a revenge plot, a federal indictment said.
The indictment, filed on Tuesday, stated David William Platek, 41, of Springfield, Missouri, texted several “true threats” to someone in December with the intent to harm an elected official in San Luis Obispo County.
It’s unclear who the elected official is at this time.
Platek was arrested on Jan. 24 and is in federal custody at Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles, according to federal court records.
But Platek was previously charged with felony identity theft in 2019. Those charges, which were filed by the SLO County District Attorney’s Office, were eventually dismissed for furtherance of justice, meaning a judge found that there was reasonable ground to dismiss the charge.
In the current indictment, Platek was charged with threats by interstate communication, court documents said.
According to the indictment, Platek’s messages began on Dec. 9 and include a number of chilling and violent threats, including killing the elected official. Platek is alleged to have messaged the elected official directly on social media and texted a third unidentified person.
“I’ve got the ammo. I just need to rent a uhaul and drive to CA. He took everything from me, and I want to take it from him,” Platek wrote in a Dec. 9 text message, according to the indictment.
“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. It would be more fitting to leave (SLO County official) and those responsible alive in an aftermath to explain what happened,” he allegedly wrote in another message.
On Dec. 11, Platek changed the profile picture on one of his social media accounts to a Nintendo Luigi character, what the indictment says was a reference to Luigi Mangione, the alleged killer of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
According to the indictment, Platek reposted a post from the elected official’s account in hopes that the elected official’s “heart will skip a beat when he sees this” and that “no one is ever going to see this except (the SLO County official).”
Platek texted the other unidentified person that his profile change and repost was “the most subtle baseball death threat one could ever hope to craft. … This is a message meant to be received by only one person.”
According to multiple messages on Dec. 16, Platek wrote, “I’d rather be remembered as a killer” and “My revenge will scar history books.”
He also said he would let the children of the elected official live.
“I’d wait for a sick day, let them live with the guilt of watching their classmates die because their father is corrupts (sic),“ Platek said in a text, according to the indictment.
“I wouldn’t even kill myself,” he wrote in another message. “I’d want the trial. I am the monster (SLO County official) and the broken justice system made me. You let it all happen, you all paid the price. Bullets are cheap and children are plentiful.”
He then went on to detail a plot to bomb a local school.
“(San Luis Obispo) wants to destroy my life, I’ll blow up one of their schools,” he said in another message. “The second political assassination of 2024, David Platek assassinated (SLO County official) two days before his second act, a large explosion killing 400, mostly children in San Luis Obispo.”
He said he would get a job that would allow him access to fertilizer and would take potassium nitrate from a nearby farm, the indictment said. Potassium nitrate is used to make explosives and fertilizers, according to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration.
“I hear dead kids upset parents a lot,” he wrote in another message. “On January 1, I will shift all of my focus to killing as many people as possible in my lifetime.”
He also said he would “take that truck driver job, and I’ll exist as a ghost committing atrocities across the nation.”
The Tribune reached out to the District Attorney’s Office regarding the indictment but has not yet heard back.
Missouri man previously charged with identity theft in SLO County
In September 19, Platek was charged with two counts of felony identity theft and a misdemeanor charge of impersonating a person through electronic means, relating to him creating a fake Facebook account of San Luis Obispo political activist Kevin P. Rice.
According to the District Attorney’s Office at the time, Platek impersonated Rice via Facebook comments “in order to publish false statements that were intended to damage Kevin P. Rice’s reputation.”
The comments in question were allegedly made on Aug. 9, 2018, on a San Luis Obispo Tribune article about convicted sex offender Brock Turner. The comments were removed by the time the charges were filed.
Rice was a local activist best known for his promotion of the Oceano Dunes State Recreational Vehicle Area and his filing of campaign finance complaints of political opponents.
During Dow’s 2018 re-election campaign, Rice filed a complaint to the Fair Political Practices Commission against Dow’s opponent, Judge Mike Cummings. Rice told The Tribune in 2019 that his support of Dow had nothing to do with the criminal case against Platek.
Rice said he submitted a written complaint to the District Attorney’s Office about the 2018 comments and said he had been “attacked over and over” in the comments section of The Tribune’s Facebook posts.
“I’ve had to block accounts and this is why,” Rice said in 2019. “I think this will be an important case to serve as an example that you can go too far on Facebook.”
Patrick Fisher, Platek’s defense attorney at that time, questioned the legitimacy of the case in 2019 and said the investigations started with a complaint from someone who “seems to be at least a political ally of our district attorney.”
“I don’t see a crime based on what I’ve seen so far,” Fisher said in 2019.
The charges were ultimately dismissed in the interest of justice, court records show.
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