TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – A Florida State University student said she shared a class with the accused gunman from Thursday’s mass shooting.
RELATED: FSU Shooting
Bookbags, laptops, and other items can be seen inside the building.
By 9:30 a.m., students lined up at the door to go inside. At 10 a.m., building administrators let students in one by one and escorted them to their belongings.
Two students waiting in line described the chaos inside the building that day.
“Originally, I was in the basement, and I saw everybody running. I was like, Why are they running? Then we all ran to the corner of the basement, and that’s when we heard the shots. There was nowhere to exit the student union, so I hid in the bathroom. I was in a stall with four people, and we didn’t know what was happening. We thought the shooter was upstairs. There was rumbling, then the announcement came out that there was a shooter on the campus. I panicked and texted my mom and telling her the situation and giving her a goodbye text,” Samantha Navas said.
Another student said she saw a guy run past the area she was in.
“I ran into the bookstore and ran out the emergency exit. I ran off the loading dock and up the stairs that lead you out to the street, and I got in someone’s car. Someone opened the door and said, get in and I got into a random girl’s car, and she took me to her apartment,” Amanda Cantillo said.
Luke Dickie said he was walking towards the student union entrance when he heard the gunfire.
“I literally dropped my backpack,” Dickie said. “I live over there, so I dashed across Tennessee Street and ran as fast as I could.”
The student union wasn’t the only building next to the green space affected by the mass shooting. Another student said he and others were in a classroom when they heard the gunshots and began barricading themselves in the classroom.
“There was instant panic,” Reece Chibnick said. “People got off their desks and were up against the wall. I was helping to barricade one of the two doors on the left side of the classroom while my professor was on the right. It was terrifying.”
Police identified the alleged shooter as 20-year-old Phoenix Ikner, an FSU student and the son of a Leon County deputy. Addyson Basalari said she shared a class with Ikner.
“He sat right next to me, and our class was supposed to be at 1:20 p.m. Had he waited, it could have been me or one of my classmates. I think it’s really eye-opening that it’s so close to home, and it makes us look over our shoulders now and hope that when we go into class that we get out of class safe and alive,” Basalari said.
Two people were killed and six others were injured in the shooting, officials said in a news conference Thursday evening. Police said the two men who died were not students, but no other victim information was immediately released.
A surgeon at Tallahassee Memorial Health said the six injured victims are in “fair” condition.
FSU will hold an official vigil to honor the victims of the shooting on Friday at 5 p.m.
An FSU student organization will hold a vigil on Saturday at 5 p.m.
