April 22, 2025
Florida State university shooter identified as 20-year-old stepson of a Leon County school resource deputy
On April 17, 2025, at approximately 11.am, 20-year-old Phoenix Ikner arrived at the Florida State University parking garage.
Around fifty minutes later, he got out of his vehicle, left the lot, and made his way to the university campus with his stepmothers gun in hand.
The first shot was fired at 11:56am and by 11:58am calls to 911 began flooding in about an active shooter. The university put out an emergency alert, and both staff and students hid and waited for officers to arrive on scene and evacuate them.
Ikner walked through the hallways and greenspaces open firing on students, his bullets hitting seven people, two of whom died at the scene.
By noon, the shooter had been shot by police and taken into custody, and by 3:17 p.m police declared the scene secure. Students who had been huddled in various rooms on campus in fear, were able to retrieve their strewn and discarded belongings and return to their dorms.
Robert Morales was one of two victims who died in the shooting. Morales, of Miami-Dade County, was a father and husband working as a dining service employee at the university. He had worked at FSU since 2015 and had also studied criminology at FSU in the 1990s. He was once the CEO of a food group as well as a former assistant football coach at Leon High School.
Robert’s own father, Ricardo "monkey" Morales was a Cuban exile who went on to be a CIA operative in South Florida.
45-year-old Tiru Chabba also died in the shooting. Chabba was a regional vice president of Aramark Collegiate Hospitality who had worked for the company for over twenty years. He was also a beloved husband and a father of two who is dearly missed by his loved ones.
A representative of the dining company said in a statement: "We are heartbroken to confirm that an Aramark employee was among those killed at FSU yesterday in that senseless act of violence. We are absolutely shaken by the news and our deepest sympathies are with the family and our entire Aramark community."
The other injured victims of the shooting are currently being treated at Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare hospital, where all but one are said to be in stable condition.
According to Tallahassee Police Chief Lawrence Revell, at the time of writing, there appears to be no connection between the shooter and his victims.
The shooter was soon identified as Phoenix Ikner, who media outlets said was "raised by a sheriff’s deputy and trained by sheriff’s deputies."
His stepmother, Jessica Ikner, is a school resource deputy at Raa Middle School in Leon County. Police say that she owned a firearm for personal use. At a press conference Sheriff Walter A. McNeil said Pheonix Ikner had "been steeped in the Leon County Sheriff's Office family" and had "engaged in a number of training programs." For this reason, police believe it would have been relatively easy for the shooter to access a firearm.
Jessica Ikner’s employer stated that she has been a service to the community for almost two decades and will not be suspended.
Fellow classmates described Pheonix Ikner as quiet, expressing himself through his choice of clothing and accessories. The shooter was said to sport a National Rifle Association T-shirt and various pin badges in support of the police.
One classmate, Ian Townsend, told the Miami Herald Ikner said "right-wing things."
The independent reports that Ikner was asked to leave a political round table club after expressing white supremist views and rhetoric.
In a quote from an article in the Miami Herald, a fellow classmate who was in The Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps (JROTC) with Ikner said of the shooter:
“He definitely wasn’t that quiet kid that was sitting in the back of the class. He was friendly to an extent of course. He would just make some comments … being either sexist because he did not like taking orders from a female...being told what to do. You just had a feeling that something was off with him.”
Another former classmate described the shooter as intelligent, saying he took advanced classes. In middle school he was described as the weird kid, who sat at the back of the classroom drawing "dark" things in his note books. He got picked on, one classmate said, he was obnoxious and annoying to the other students who often told him to stop disrupting them.
A high school friend said he was "awful," racist and homophobic, but believed he had mellowed out by the time he was in college.
Phoenix Ikner's biological mother, Anne-Mari Eriksen, said in an interview with Local 10 WPLG-TV, that she had not been in contact with Pheonix for several years after a custody battle with his father.
Eriksen, a Norway national who holds both Norwegian and American citizenship, was arrested at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on kidnapping charges after taking Pheonix to Norway, which was against the couples custody agreement.
Media outlets report that Eriksen took their son to Norway under the guise of a vacation in South Florida. He went by the name Christian Gunnar Eriksen, which is reportedly his birthname, which was later changed in 2020.
It is reported that while there he did not attend school, nor any medical appointments, and did not take medications for both ADHD and a growth hormone disorder he apparently had. He was around 10 years old at the time.
Ikner is currently in hospital to treat his injuries. Once stable, he will be transferred to a detention facility. The nature of his injuries and stability has not been publicly disclosed at the time of writing.
President Donald Trump said of the shooting: "It's a shame, a horrible thing." He added that he was a big advocated of the Second Amendment in the US Constitution.
April 15, 2025
