A 22-year-old Big Coppitt Key man was arrested Wednesday on multiple firearm charges after Monroe County Sheriff's Office detectives said they found two loaded handguns — including one with a trigger modified to mimic automatic fire — left on a closet floor within reach of a young child inside a Lower Keys home.
Javier Valdivia Pedraza was taken into custody and booked into jail on Wednesday, according to Tampa Free Press, after detectives obtained warrants for his arrest stemming from a search conducted more than a week earlier. Sheriff's office detectives executed a search warrant at a residence on Ed Swift Road, located on Big Coppitt Key near Mile Marker 10 along U.S. Highway 1, roughly six miles east of Stock Island and Key West, according to Redfin.
During that search, investigators located a 9mm Glock handgun with a modified trigger designed to mimic fully automatic fire, as well as a .22-caliber Glock handgun that had been reported stolen out of Florida City, Florida. Detectives also found extra ammunition for both weapons. According to law enforcement, both handguns were loaded and left on a closet floor within reach of a young child who was inside the home when the weapons were accessible.
Charges Span Theft, Illegal Modification and Unsafe Storage
Valdivia Pedraza now faces charges including grand theft of a firearm, possession of an illegally modified firearm, and storing firearms in an unsafe manner, the report's account states. Under Florida Statute § 790.222, possessing a device designed to alter a firearm's rate of fire to mimic automatic weapon fire is a third-degree felony carrying up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine, a prohibition Florida enacted as part of the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act, per the Florida Senate.
Separately, Florida Statute § 812.014(2)(c)(5) automatically classifies the unlawful taking of any firearm as grand theft of a firearm, also a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison, regardless of the weapon's value or condition. And under Florida Statute § 790.174, storing or leaving a loaded firearm where a minor under 16 is likely to gain access without a locked box or trigger lock is a second-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to 60 days in jail.
A National Surge in Illegal Conversion Devices
Devices like the one found on the 9mm Glock, commonly called Glock switches, are aftermarket, black-market, or 3D-printed parts rather than products made by Glock, Inc., which does not manufacture conversion devices for its commercial handguns, according to the Department of Justice. The devices can push a semiautomatic pistol to fire up to 1,200 rounds per minute.
Their spread has been dramatic. A 2025 report by the Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund found law enforcement agencies across 28 U.S. cities recovered more than 1,100 Glock switches in 2024 alone, a seven-fold increase since 2020 among reporting cities. Federal ATF data cited by Everytown Research & Policy showed more than 31,000 machine gun conversion devices recovered nationwide between 2019 and 2023, a 784 percent increase. Under federal statutes 18 U.S.C. § 922(o) and 26 U.S.C. § 5845(b), possessing an unregistered conversion device is also a federal felony carrying up to 10 years in prison, since federal authorities classify the devices as machine guns even when they are not attached to a firearm.
Stolen Handgun Traces Back to Florida City
The .22-caliber Glock recovered from the closet had been reported stolen out of Florida City, a mainland municipality that recorded an aggravated assault rate of 1,696 per 100,000 residents in the first half of 2025, according to SafeHome.org, making it one of the highest violent crime areas in the state. It is not clear from available records how the weapon made its way from Florida City to the Lower Keys residence.
Hoodline has not previously covered this specific case, though it has reported on a string of similar Glock switch arrests elsewhere in the country in recent days, including a Washington state chase that ended with a switch found in a vehicle and a raid in University City that netted two teens along with a modified pistol. Those cases, along with this one, reflect a pattern investigators nationwide say they are seeing with increasing frequency.
Court records reviewed as part of this case indicate a suspect with the same name and a matching age progression was previously arrested by Miami-Dade Police in December 2022 in connection with a fatal shooting and robbery of a man found inside a car in Homestead, Florida, according to Univision. That earlier case involved second-degree murder and robbery charges. Whether that 2022 defendant and the man now facing charges in Monroe County are the same person has not been confirmed through official law enforcement statements, and it remains an open question tied to this case.
