TEMPLETON, Calif. (KSBY) — Former Templeton Area Advisory Group (TAAG) chairman David Leader is now serving a 30-day county jail sentence after admitting to violating his felony probation. This comes more than three weeks before Leader was originally supposed to turn himself in.
“[I’m] not surprised that he didn’t make it to the end of October,” said TAAG Board Member Murray Powell.
“I think that if he had just behaved himself, he wouldn’t have gone to jail,” said one of David Leader’s neighbors, who wishes to remain anonymous, stating that she fears for her safety when 71-year-old Leader is released from jail.
“I think he’s dangerous!” she said. “I think he’s dangerous to all of his neighbors and anybody else who disagrees with him.”
This neighbor is one of about eight who have a temporary restraining order against him. She took out the TRO because she says Leader has been harassing her family for about three years, after neighbors voted to remove him from one of the HOA boards.
“He was voted off the road maintenance, and that made him angry, so he started with the harassing,” she said.
Neighbors say Leader would drive around the neighborhood of Orchard Road and terrorize them.
“He would harass them nonstop, day and night, drive by erratically, be obnoxious, shine lights into their homes, honking incessantly, kicking up as much dirt as possible, charging them in their cars… It got very scary,” the anonymous neighbor said.
In July, Leader pleaded guilty to one felony count of vandalism, and seven misdemeanor counts of violating a court order.
He was sentenced to 30 days in county jail, which he was to begin serving Oct. 31, and two years of supervised probation.
Just a few days after his sentencing, Leader resigned from the TAAG Board, following a chaotic meeting where he was escorted out because neighbors with TROs against him were present.
KSBY caught up with Leader a little more than a week after his resignation, and he denied any wrongdoing against neighbors.
“Shining a spotlight in a window every night – flat out lie; honking my horn in front of her house everyday – flat out lie; stopping my truck in front of their driveway everyday…If I had done any of those things, that’s called disturbing the peace. I would’ve been arrested,” Leader said.
Since Leader’s resignation, Powell says four other board members have resigned from TAAG, now leaving only two.
“We need four to even have a meeting,” he said. “We have to dissolve TAAG, because we have no ability to move forward, just based on our own bylaws.”
On Oct. 8, Leader was back in the hot seat, this time for allegedly violating his felony probation, and was jailed immediately.
He now also faces two counts of disobeying a court order.
“I’m hoping that he’s going to say, ‘Wow, that really sucked! I don’t want to do that again, so maybe I’ll just behave myself and be a neighborly person in the neighborhood; in society,’” the anonymous neighbor said.
San Luis Obispo County Supervisor John Peschong tells KSBY News that the Board of Supervisors needs to put an item on the agenda to formally unrecognize TAAG before a new group could be formed and then approved by the board.
