Florida middle schooler charged as adult for building homemade guns in robbery scheme

A 14-year-old student in St. Johns County was arrested and charged as an adult after police say he fabricated firearms and explosives while planning a robbery with a friend.

Sheriff Robert Hardwick disclosed that the probe started on April 27 when deputies were alerted to Telegram chats in which 14-year-old Julian Davis discussed holding a victim at gunpoint and detailed how to construct a shotgun and musket. Subsequent raids of Davis’s residence yielded three improvised firearms, ammunition, suspected explosive components, makeshift handcuffs, and a tactical vest bearing white-supremacy symbols, along with copies of extremist manifestos and the "Anarchist Cookbook."

Both Davis and his 13-year-old friend were charged with conspiracy to commit a robbery with a firearm, but only Davis was charged as an adult and is being held on a $240,000 bond. He has entered a not-guilty plea and faces a further arraignment. The friend served 21 days in the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice before release. Neither student will return to Switzerland Point Middle School, and officials say no direct threat to the school was identified.