TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – In an update provided by law enforcement at a news conference on Thursday afternoon, Phoenix Ikner was accused of being the gunman who killed two people and injured six more on Florida State University’s campus earlier in the day.
According to Leon County Sheriff Walter McNeil, Ikner, 20, is the son of a deputy with the Leon County Sheriff’s Office who has been with the agency for over 18 years and works as a school resource officer. He is also a student at FSU.
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McNeil added that Ikner used his mother’s handgun to carry out the deadly act, which the deputy had previously used and purchased after the sheriff’s office transitioned to new handguns.
“Unfortunately, her son had access to one of her weapons, and that was one of the weapons that was found at the scene,” he said. “We are continuing that investigation into how that weapon was used and what other weapons he may have had access to.”
The sheriff also said it’s “not a surprise” that Ikner was able to access his mother’s weapons because of how involved he was with training programs conducted by the agency.
Evidence of the relationship between Ikner and the Leon County Sheriff’s Office can be found in a news release sent by the agency on August 17, 2021, which lists Ikner as a member of its “Youth Advisory Council,” an entity established in 2020 to “provide an open line of communication between the youth of Leon County and local law enforcement.”
In that news release, it states that Ikner was a junior at Lincoln High School at the time, which is part of the Leon County School District.
A FSU student News4JAX spoke with said she knew Ikner because they attended Tallahassee Community College and FSU together. She said they were studying the same program.
“For the most part, he was an average day person. We got along well,” she said. “It’s weird to think that that was what he was capable of because he never showed any signs.”
Tallahassee Police Chief Lawrence Revell said he doesn’t believe that Ikner shot at officers, but that the suspect did not comply with commands after officers engaged with him and was shot.
Revell added that Ikner “had a shotgun with him” when the shooting occurred, but was unable to confirm whether the weapon was used during Thursday’s incident.
Officials said Ikner invoked his right not to speak to police and was taken to a local hospital after being placed into custody.
Revell said Ikner was in critical condition but suffered non-life-threatening injuries.
A review of court records by CNN showed Ikner had a tumultuous childhood, with another woman — identified in the documents as his biological mother — accused of removing him from the US in violation of a custody agreement when he was 10 years old.
On Instagram, an account with Ikner’s name and photo that was taken offline after he was publicly identified included a biblical quote on its profile: “You are my war club, my weapon for battle; with you I shatter nations, with you I destroy kingdoms.”
Reid Seybold, an FSU student, told CNN he knew Ikner, whom he encountered in an extracurricular political club a few years ago. Seybold said Ikner was asked to leave the group, which discussed current events, due to behavior that unsettled others.
“He had continually made enough people uncomfortable where certain people had stopped coming. That’s kind of when we reached the breaking point with Phoenix, and we asked him to leave,” Seybold told CNN’s Omar Jimenez Thursday.
