Cnn
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While several cycles of shots broke out near the student union of Florida State University before noon Thursday, the students moved away from the campus trying to go safe while the sound of the emergency sirens became stronger.
Only two minutes after the 911 calls reported the shooting, the suspect was killed by university police and placed in police custody, the authorities announced. Despite the quick response, the shooting left two dead and injured five others, sending shock waves in the university community.
“The call came out, someone called him, and immediately he replied to the scene and immediately neutralized the suspect and prevented this from being a greater tragedy,” the president of the FSU, Richard McCullough said on Thursday.
While new details emerge on the alleged shooter, Tallahassee police are looking for a reason during their investigation.
The suspect, Phoenix Ikner, 20, is the son of a Sheriff MP from Leon County and an FSU student, according to the police. There does not seem to be any links between Ikner and one of the victims, Tallahassee police chief Lawrence Revell said on Thursday.
“We will continue to check this. We will continue to follow the tracks that arrive, but at this current moment, there does not seem to be a link between the shooter and … even one of the victims,” said Revell.
Ikner suffered serious injuries and will remain hospitalized “for a lot of time” before being transported to a local detention center, Revell CNN told Revell on Friday afternoon. At this point, he faces accusations “until and including first degree murder,” said Revell in a video message on Friday.
Two men – a coordinator of university catering and an employee of a seller of the campus – were killed. Officials have not yet identified the five victims injured during the shooting.
Five patients hospitalized in relation to the shooting remain in the hospital in good condition and who should recover completely, and a patient was able to return home on Friday, said Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare. Five people were injured in the shooting and another person was injured while trying to run away, police said. The hospital refused to say if Ikner was one of their patients.
“They all suffer and suffer and frightened, but are doing remarkably well and should recover completely,” McCullough said on Friday, who visited the victims of the hospital.
It is the sixth mass shooting of Florida this year and the 81st across the country, according to the archives of armed violence. He arrives seven years after a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas secondary school in Parkland, Florida, left 17 dead.
“As the father of several children, this is the thing we fear the most. It is this act of random violence that seems to have no meaning or rhyme, reason,” said Revell. “To know that your child was on this campus, knowing that your child may or may not have been involved and not know that I can only imagine terror and fear.”
Here is what we know about the calendar, the suspect and the victims of the Thursday shooting.
Around 11 a.m. on Thursday, Ikner arrived in an FSU parking lot and stayed in the region for about an hour, coming back intermittently to his vehicle, police announced in a statement on Friday.
Then Ikner left the parking lot at 11:51 a.m. about five minutes later, the first blow was fired.
Ikner, using the old service weapon of the deputy, would have entered several buildings and green spaces, apparently pulling at random. At 11:58 a.m., while students barricaded doors and sent sms to their loved ones, several 911 calls reported an active shooter on the campus.
The alleged shooter “did not comply with orders,” said Revell, and at noon, the suspect was killed and placed in detention, when he invoked his right not to speak, Revell said on Thursday.
The suspect may have been ready to shoot more people if he had not been faced with the application of the laws shortly after the start of the shooting, said an official of the application of familiar laws with the current investigation. With the service weapon found on the suspect, the police recovered an AR-15 rifle in the car he led to the campus and a hunting rifle in the student union.
“What we saw on April 17 was an extraordinary example of teamwork and professionalism in the face of a horrible event,” Revell said in a statement on Friday.
With the investigation at its beginnings and the still unknown reason, the authorities question witnesses and victims, according to the press release.
The suspect is an FSU student and the deputy son
Ikner, a major in junior political science in the state of Florida, was “imbued with the Sheriff’s office in Leon County” and was involved in training programs, according to the authorities.
“It is not a surprise for us to have access to weapons,” said the Sheriff of Leon, Walter McNeil on Thursday.
Ikner had been transferred to the FSU this spring semester of Tallahassee State College, where he had obtained a diploma in arts. Ikner had links with local police as a member of the advisory council for young people at the Sheriff’s office and as the son of a longtime deputy who is a local school resource agent, McNeil said.
Five current and former students of the Tallahassee State College said that CNN Ikner had made peers uncomfortable in class and during political discussions by expressing what they considered extreme opinions. Ikner described the icon of civil rights Rosa Parks as “in evil”, defended the use of Nazi symbols and pro-Palestinian and black demonstrators of black life, students said.
The court documents examined by CNN also highlighted the tumultuous childhood of the suspect, showing how his mother and his father fought in court for almost his whole life. The judicial files, which extend over almost 17 years from the moment Ikner was two years old until 19, detailing the acrimonial allegations between his parents, with a court deposited by the biological mother of Ikner characterizing the child, then aged 10, as “in the midst of a war”.
It is not known if the suspect’s biological mother has had contacts with him in the last decade, and she has not responded to CNN comments. But just after the shooting, she posted on Facebook complaining that her son’s father had not answered when she wrote “to ask if everything is fine with my son, who studies at FSU.”
“I was alienated from him,” his biological mother’s CNN subsidiary, Anne-Mari Eriksen, affiliated to CNN in Tallahassee on Friday, saying that she had not seen her son for several years.
“I worry about him in the past, but I would never have thought,” Eriksen told WPLG.
The devoted university employee, Robert Morales and the loving father of two Tiri Chabba, were honored in a university vigil on Friday.
“They were deeply loved and their absences leave an emptiness that cannot be filled,” said Kyle Clark, principal vice-president of the university
Several memorials of balloons, bouquets of flowers, candles and animals in plush could be seen all around The University Student Syndicate on Friday, as well as messages of support like “Stay strong” and pleadings for the reform of firearms and mental health. Two white crosses with blue hearts were erected in the middle of the memorial, bearing the names and messages of love of morals and chabba for them.
Friday, the governor of Florida Ron Desantis ordered the flags to be transported by plane half-person until sunset on Monday, “in memory of the lives lost in this tragedy and to recognize the bravery shown by the first stakeholders.”
Morales, a dining room coordinator was a kind and patient person who would often surprise administrators and staff with homemade Cuban meals and pastries, said Clark.
“Today, we have lost my younger brother,” wrote his brother, Ricardo Morales, in an article accompanied by family photos. “He loved his work to FSU and his beautiful wife and daughter. I’m glad you were in my life. ”
Art Smith, a famous chief who had previously worked alongside Morales, said that he would remember him as a joyful man who has always praised others with a smile.
Chabba, a resident in Greenville, in South Carolina, was an employee of Aramark, a management company for catering services and installations based in Philadelphia, according to lawyers representing his family.
Although it is supposed to be a period of celebration for the family of Chabba as Easter approaches, his wife and his two children are now crying the immense loss.
“Tiri Chabba’s family goes through the unimaginable now,” said lawyer Bakari Sellers in a statement. “Instead of hiding Easter eggs and visiting friends and family, they live a nightmare where this loving father and her dedicated husband were stolen from them in an act of insane and avoidable violence.”
Classes should resume on Monday, but FSU student Reid Seybold said it would be a difficult return.
“I don’t know how I’m going to class on Monday,” Seybold told CNN on Saturday. “I don’t feel safe right now on campus.”
