TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Court records reviewed by News4JAX revealed new details about the childhood of the FSU student who is accused of opening fire on the school’s campus Thursday.
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Investigators said Phoenix Ikner, 20, injured six people and killed two others around noon Thursday when he showed up on campus with at least two firearms.
Leon County’s sheriff said Ikner used his mother’s gun, a former service weapon, to carry out the shooting and that his mother was a school resource officer who has worked for the sheriff’s office for more than 18 years.
The sheriff did not name her, but News4JAX found a picture of Jessica Ikner, the same last name as Phoenix, with the sheriff last year when she was named law enforcement officer of the month.
Court documents suggest the deputy was either his adopted mother or stepmother and that the accused shooter was described by his father as having developmental delays as a child and special needs.
Court records also point to a heated custody battle when Phoenix was young. His father and Jessica Ikner were named as defendants 10 years ago in a civil lawsuit filed by Anne-Mari Ericksen.
Ericksen has several pictures posted on her social media page of Phoenix Ikner and says he is her biological son.
Court documents show she lost custody of him when he was about 10 years old after she was arrested for violating a custody agreement with his father when she left the country with the boy.
She was later ordered to have no contact with the father and Deputy Ikner and no contact with her son’s doctors, counselors or teachers, among others.
Phoenix attended school in Tallahassee at Lincoln High and the sheriff said that as a teenager, the accused gunman served as a Youth Advisory Council member for the Leon County Sheriff’s Office.
“He has been 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 that he had access to weapons,” Leon County Sheriff Walter McNeil said Thursday.
A news release from the Leon County Sheriff’s Office showed Ikner was a junior in high school at the time he served on the council four years ago.
To qualify for the program, students had to attend a high school in Leon County, have a minimum grade point average of 2.0 and have limited unexcused absences from school.
A student at FSU said she attended classes with the accused gunman at Tallahassee Community College before he later enrolled at FSU.