The suspect in the Florida State University shooting on Thursday is the stepson of a local sheriff’s deputy, according to law enforcement officials, and some of his classmates said he had espoused white supremacist and far-right views.
Authorities said Phoenix Ikner, 20, opened fire near the student union on the Tallahassee campus, killing two people and injuring six others, and was believed to be a current student at FSU. He used a handgun that belongs to his stepmother, Leon County Sheriff Walt McNeil said Thursday.
The suspect, McNeil said, was “steeped in the Leon County Sheriff’s Office family, engaged in a number of training programs that we have, so it’s not a surprise to us that he had access to weapons.” He was also a longtime member of the Leon County Sheriff’s Office youth advisory council, McNeil said.
Ikner was hospitalized with serious but not life-threatening injuries, Tallahassee Police Chief Lawrence Revell said Thursday night. Authorities have not announced a motive in the shooting.
Some of Ikner’s classmates said he harbored white supremacist views. FSU senior Reid Seybold, the former president of a political discussion group at Tallahassee State College, where the suspect initially enrolled, told NBC News that Ikner had repeated “so much white supremacist rhetoric and far-right rhetoric” and was told not to return to the group because of his views.
FSU junior Lucas Luzietti, who said he shared a government class with Ikner at Tallahassee State College, told NBC News that the suspect had made racist comments and denied the results of the 2020 presidential election.
“He espoused the election denialism belief that Joe Biden was not the legitimate president,” Luzietti said. “He said that Rosa Parks was in the wrong. He also talked about how Black people are ruining his neighborhood and Stonewell was bad for society. He would also talk about how multiculturalism is dangerous.
“Everyone [in the class] would just look at each other like, ‘Did he really just say that?’” Speaking in the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump told reporters that the shooting was “a shame” but suggested he wouldn’t do anything to strengthen gun laws. “These things are terrible, but the gun doesn’t do the shooting — the people do,” Trump said, acknowledging that it’s “a phrase that’s used probably too often.” “As far as legislation is concerned, this has been going on for a long time,” he added. “I have an obligation to protect the Second Amendment. I ran on the Second Amendment, among many other things, and I will always protect the Second Amendment.”
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
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