A runaway teenager’s string of police encounters and alleged threats to kill immigration agents led to three arrests in Alabama last month, court records show.
Law enforcement tracked 18-year-old Levi Belcher of Tennessee after noticing threats on social media in December 2025, and after being reported missing by the suspect’s father the following month, the FBI alleged in criminal complaints. Investigations ultimately led Alabama police to search a Huntsville apartment on Sept. 10 to find it “littered with anti-government writings,” plus a rifle with “anti fascist” written on it, according to the charging documents.
Federal grand jury indictments in October charged Belcher and two roommates from the Huntsville residence with possessing unregistered rifles, while Belcher was also charged with threatening communications. Belcher’s legal team did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment. Court records did not list attorneys for the roommates, Tadashi Erekson and Anthony Slota.
The arrests came amid President Donald Trump’s crackdown on what he considers an overlooked problem of left-wing political violence. Police searched the Alabama apartment just one year after conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s fatal shooting, a suspected political assassination that further invigorated Trump’s efforts.
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Belcher, who went by “Cici” on Instagram, previously interacted with law enforcement as a minor due to open-source internet searches about “improvised devices” and a weapon-building guide called the Anarchist Cookbook, the FBI’s charging documents said. A federal office in Nashville already had a safety bulletin on Belcher by August 2026 due to those incidents.
After escaping from home, Madison County officers arrested Belcher in April 2025 for allegedly driving a vehicle stolen from the suspect’s father. The FBI mentioned another “interaction with law enforcement” in Alabama in September 2025, but provided no details.
A witness later reported the suspect to authorities over alleged December 2025 posts on Threads saying Belcher would “gun down an [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agent on sight” and showing a firearm. Belcher’s suspected Threads account posted in July that its user was a “white [transgender] woman.”
An Instagram account the FBI connected to Belcher contains posts about the owner previously being in jail, tracking immigration agents around the area, and visiting a tabling event with the anarchist group Food Not Bombs Huntsville. The tabling post showed footage of pamphlets with phrases such as “a world without police.”
“What would john brown do?” reads the account’s profile, naming the 1800s slave revolt leader who has become a symbol for modern-day leftists.
Just before the September home search, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives conducted surveillance in Decatur, Alabama, while trying to locate Belcher’s vehicle, case documents say. A driver then dropped off Belcher and Slota in body armor as they carried guns and “military style backpacks,” the FBI wrote.
The pair entered Belcher’s vehicle and drove away until ATF and local police stopped them, according to the records. The FBI described a “probable cause search” of the vehicle that found dozens of gun magazines “with various writings on them to include ‘I hate the police’,
‘Are we free yet’, and other anti-government sentiments.” Concerns over the findings led police to obtain a warrant to search the Huntsville apartment.
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Erekson owned the apartment where the trio lived and “shared extreme contempt towards law enforcement,” according to the FBI. He also allegedly tried to reach for a concealed pistol as police arrested him at the residence.
The FBI noted “indications of anarchist and antifascist ideology” throughout the home. Among a pile of memorabilia shown in photos was a sign saying, “Fred Hampton would know how to fix these dirty pigs” — referencing a Black Panther activist killed in a 1969 police raid.