From ‘tumultuous childhood’ to alleged shooter: Who is Phoenix Ikner the suspected Florida State campus gunman?
A student arrested after two people were killed and six more injured in a shooting on Florida State University’s Tallahassee campus is the son of a sheriff’s deputy, cops say.
Phoenix Ikner, 20, was taken into custody after Thursday’s shooting, police revealed at a press conference.
Cops say he used a former service weapon owned by his mother to carry out the deadly attack. It has since been reported that Ikner had spent time training with law enforcement himself. It has also emerged that Ikner endured a “tumultuous childhood”, with another woman identified in court records as his biological mother accused of taking him abroad in March 2015 without his father’s consent when he was just 10 years old.
Ikner suffered “significant injuries” and is expected to be in the hospital for a while, Tallahassee Police Chief Lawrence Revell said Friday, before stressing: “Once he is released from that facility, he’ll be taken to a local detention facility where he will face the charges up to and including first-degree murder.”
Below, we look at everything we know about the suspect and the attack:
Leon County Sheriff Walt McNeil named FSU undergraduate Phoenix Ikner, a political science major, as the shooter. Ikner is the son of Leon County Deputy Jessica Ikner.
Deputy Ikner has been on the force for 18 years and also works as a school resource officer. Her profile appeared to have been removed from the Leon County Sheriff’s Office website as of Thursday evening.
The 20-year-old was a long-standing member of the agency’s Youth Advisory Council, McNeil said, and was part of the sheriff’s office “family.” He added that it was “not a surprise” that Ikner had access to firearms, given his mother’s job.
“This event is tragic in more ways than you people in the audience could ever fathom from a law enforcement perspective,” the sheriff said.
“But I will tell you this, we will make sure we send a message to folks that this will never be tolerated here in Leon County, and I dare say, across this state and across this nation.”
A fellow member of the Youth Advisory Council described Ikner to The New York Times as always “in good spirits,” helpful and always proposing “really good ideas to help Leon County.” He added that Ikner “never spoke about guns or anything.”
It was revealed on Friday that Ikner had a “tumultuous childhood,” including a fraught custody battle between his biological parents. It was suggested in court filings that the dispute had caused emotional and psychological harm that would be “evident for years.”
“Given the child being the age of 11, will have memory impacted by the behaviors of all the defendants for the false claims done on his mother, and for the parental alienation of the close relationship of the minor child,” the documents stated.
Ikner was originally named Christian Eriksen and Anne-Mari Eriksen is identified in court records as his biological mother. She was accused of taking him to Norway in March 2015 in violation of a custody agreement.
