Cnn
–
A student from Florida State University accused of having killed two people and injuring five others during a shooting at the University on Thursday is the son of a deputy for the local sheriff, according to the authorities, and I spent time training with the police and sitting on the advisory council of a sheriff in the years preceding his alleged attack.
When he was placed in police custody after being killed and injured by university police, Phoenix Ikner, 20, wore a handgun that was previously the service weapon of Sheriff Jessica Ikner, according to officials and files.
Police did not reveal any potential reason during the shooting. There does not seem to be any links between the suspect and one of the victims, Tallahassee police chief Lawrence Revell said on Friday.
An examination of the judicial archives shows that Phoenix Ikner had a tumultuous childhood, with another woman – identified in documents like his biological mother – accused of withdrawing it from the United States in violation of a guard agreement at the age of 10.
The Sheriff Walter McNeil told journalists that the suspect was “imbued with the Sheriff’s office in Leon County and that he is committed to a number of training programs that we have, so it is not a surprise for us that he had access to weapons.”
Jessica Ikner has served the Sheriff department for over 18 years, said McNeil, adding that “her service to this community has been exceptional”. She did not respond to a request for comments.
Phoenix Ikner used Jessica Ikner’s old service weapon at Thursday’s shooting, said Revell.
The police recovered an AR-15-5-style rifle, in addition to the pistol and the shotgun recovered on the scene, inside the car that Phoenix Ikner led to the campus, according to a law manager familiar with the current survey. The car was recorded with the father of the alleged shooter.
The presence of the .45 caliber pistol, the hunting rifle and the AR-15 style rifle tells the investigators that he was perhaps ready to shoot more people if he had not been faced with the application of the law, added the manager.
Phoenix Ikner was a member of the Sheriff’s Advisory Council, which is designed to “provide an open communication line between young people from Leon County and local law enforcement”, according to a press release from 2021. McNeil described it as a “longtime member” of the council.
On Instagram, an account with the name and photo of Ikner which were taken offline after being publicly identified included a biblical quote on its profile: “You are my war club, my weapon for the battle; with you, I break the nations, with you, I destroy the kingdoms.”
Ikner is a recorded republican, according to the recording files of Florida voters. It was cited in January in an article in the FSU student newspaper on anti-Trump demonstrations before the president’s inauguration.
“These people are generally quite entertaining, generally not for good reasons,” said Ikner, who has been described as a major in political science. “I think it is a little too late, he (Trump) will already be inaugurated on January 20 and there is not much that you can do unless you revolt, and I do not think that anyone who wants it.”
Investigators examine the possibility of a link between the shooting and a demonstration planned at 2:45 p.m. by the university’s Tallahassee students for a democratic society, according to the law manager, but the investigation is still in its first phases. The suspect was previously critical of the student group.
University police shot Phoenix Ikner after “complying with orders,” said Revell, adding that he did not think that Ikner shot on officers.
Ikner “received significant injuries” and “will stay in hospital for a lot of time” before being transported to a local detention center, said Revell on Friday afternoon. Revell said on Thursday that Ikner’s injuries were not deadly and that Ikner invoked his right not to speak when he was placed in police custody.
The suspect “will face accusations up to a first degree murder” once he is released from the hospital and taken to a detention center, Revell said in a video message on Friday.
Ikner is a major in junior political science in Florida State, the spokesman for the University Stephen Stone said on Friday, noting that Ikner had been transferred to the FSU for this spring semester at Tallahassee State College. He obtained a diploma as a partner in the state of Tallahassee in December, the college’s communications director, Amanda Clements, told CNN.
Because Ikner’s mother is an assistant to the Sheriff of Leon County, the Sheriff department will not work on Thursday’s shooting or has nothing to do with the suspect’s detention, said Revell.
Reid Seybold, an FSU student, told CNN that he knew Ikner, whom he had met in a parascolary political club a few years ago. Seybold said Ikner had been invited to leave the group, which discussed current events due to behavior that disrupted the others.
“He had continuously put enough people uncomfortable when some people had stopped coming. It was a bit when we reached the break with Phoenix, and we asked him to leave,” Seybold told Omar Jimenez de CNN on Thursday.
Seybold said that Ikner’s comments were going “beyond conservatism”.
“It’s been a few years now. I can’t give exact quotes,” he said. “He spoke of the ravages of multiculturalism and communism and how it ruins America.”
CNN did not independently verify the affirmations of the beliefs of the suspect.
Leon County’s County Judicial files show that Ikner’s biological mother was accused of taking her to Norway at the age of 10, in violation of a guard agreement. Documents refer to the child like Christian Eriksen and say that he and his biological mother are both Norwegian American citizens.
The suspect of the shooting then changed his name from Christian Eriksen to Phoenix Ikner, a source of application of the law confirmed to CNN.
According to an affidavit of a detective of a sheriff, the child’s biological mother told her father that she would take him to the south of Florida for the spring holidays in March 2015. Instead, she “fled the country with him in violation of their custody agreement”, taking her to Norway, said affidavit.
The suspect’s biological mother did not argue any competitions to withdraw a state minor against a court order. She was sentenced to 200 days in prison, including 170, of which she had already served, followed by two years of “community control” and then two years of probation, according to the judicial archives. She was sentenced not to contact during her sentence with her son or one of her teachers, doctors or advisers, unless a court was authorized by a court.
Later, she moved to leave her plea, saying that she had done under constraint and was refused.
It is not known if the suspect’s biological mother has had contact with him in the last decade, and she has not responded to requests for 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.”
The members of the community said that they still had trouble reconciling the bonds of Phoenix Ikner with the police with his alleged attack.
Kenniyah Houston, member of the Sheriff Youth Council, told CNN that she had been shocked to learn that the alleged shooter had served by his side. She did not personally remember Ikner, but said that the advisory council focused on the improvement of the community and the improvement of the police, so her actions were particularly shocking.
“This is what it was-making better decisions,” she said. “So that something like that happens to someone in a group like it is frightening … it’s devastating.”
Yahya Abou-Ghazala of CNN, Blake Ellis and Majlie de Puy Kamp contributed to this report.
