A Putnam County judge sentenced 27-year-old David Myles to 25 years in prison Friday, closing out a case that began nearly four years ago when Myles broke into his ex-girlfriend's Palatka apartment carrying a gun, started a physical fight, and accidentally shot himself in the foot before fleeing the scene.
Myles was 25 years old on November 1, 2022, when he went to his ex-girlfriend's apartment unit armed with a firearm, according to the State Attorney, Florida's 7th Circuit. He initiated a physical altercation inside the apartment, and during the struggle his gun discharged, striking him in his own foot rather than the woman he had come to confront. The Palatka Daily News reported that the accidental discharge allowed his ex-girlfriend to escape serious bodily injury before Myles ran from the apartment, later hiding the gun in a shed. Palatka police investigated the case and eventually tracked him down.
A Putnam County jury found Myles guilty as charged of burglary with an assault or battery while armed with a firearm, along with carrying a concealed firearm, following a two-day trial. He was 27 at the time of his May 20, 2026, conviction. Prosecutors Jonathan Gless and Ray Cauthon tried the case for the state, and Judge Mark Johnson, who heard the case, was set to impose sentence on Friday.
How a Self-Inflicted Gunshot Still Triggered a 25-Year Floor
Under Florida Statute § 810.02(2)(a), burglary with an assault or battery while armed with a firearm is a first-degree felony punishable by up to life in prison, according to the Sammis Law Firm. That charge alone put Myles at serious risk of decades behind bars. But the case also fell under Florida's so-called 10-20-Life law, a mandatory minimum statute that requires 20 years to life for anyone who discharges a firearm during a forcible felony, as outlined by the Brancato Law Firm. The law strips judges of discretion to sentence below that floor and bars any gain time or early release during the mandatory term.
That statutory framework applies regardless of who the bullet ultimately struck. Even though Myles's gunshot wound was self-inflicted, Florida law treats any firearm discharge during an armed burglary with battery as a serious felony subject to the same strict sentencing floors, per the research underlying this case's legal exposure. The 25-year sentence Judge Johnson handed down falls within that mandatory range.
Part of a Four-County Crackdown on Young Adult Gun Offenders
Myles's case was prosecuted as a designated Young Guns defendant, part of a regional initiative that Florida's 7th Judicial Circuit State Attorney R.J. Larizza announced in December 2022 alongside state, federal, and local law enforcement leaders from Volusia, Flagler, St. Johns, and Putnam counties. Operation Young Guns, which was established in May 2022, coordinates state attorneys with local sheriffs and the ATF, according to the circuit's own account of the program at sao7.com.
The framework directs prosecutors across the circuit to file adult charges and pursue harsher sentences against juveniles and young adults up to age 25 who commit violent firearm offenses, as reported by First Coast News at the time of the program's public rollout. By April 2025, that push had produced 843 designated Young Guns cases circuitwide, with thousands of felony charges filed against 850 individual defendants ranging from armed burglary and kidnapping to first-degree murder, the state attorney's office says. Investigators also lean on the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network, a forensic system that tracks stolen handguns as they move between multiple violent offenses across North Florida counties, as News4JAX has reported.
Myles's prosecution is not the only high-profile Young Guns case to come out of Putnam County. In April 2025, a jury convicted a 19-year-old of second-degree murder following a 2023 Palatka shooting that grew out of an escalating physical dispute, according to Action News Jax. Both cases share a pattern regional prosecutors have flagged repeatedly: young adult defendants bringing firearms into physical altercations that spiral into serious felony charges.
A Broader Push Beyond the Courtroom
The circuit's response to youth gun violence extends past prosecution. In August 2024, Larizza and school superintendents across four counties, including the Putnam County School District, launched a program called Safety First, Success Always, aimed at curbing youth violence, gun threats, and substance abuse. The initiative pairs classroom education with the kind of strict legal accountability now on display in Myles's sentence.
For Myles, that accountability now means 25 years in state prison, with no possibility of gain time or early release during the mandatory term. His case stands as the latest example of how the 7th Judicial Circuit has used its Young Guns framework and Florida's 10-20-Life law to pursue lengthy prison terms for young adults involved in armed violence, even in cases where the only person struck by gunfire was the shooter himself.
