A Florida State University student stands accused of fatally shooting two people on the school’s campus on Thursday and injuring six others. As the investigation into 20-year-old Phoenix Ikner continues, background info on the alleged shooter has been pouring out to the public, and it appears to indicate that he’s a Trump-supporting registered Republican and white supremacist who is not fond of Black people and was practically raised by his local sheriff’s department.
Here’s what we know so far…
According to CNN, during the shooting, Ikner was allegedly carrying a handgun that used to be the service weapon of Leon County sheriff’s deputy Jessica Ikner, who is legally the accused shooter’s mother.
Ikner was a member of the sheriff’s Youth Advisory Council, which is designed to “provide an open line of communication between the youth of Leon County and local law enforcement,” according to a news release from 2021. Sheriff Walter McNeil described him as a “longstanding member” of the council who was “steeped in the Leon County Sheriff’s Office family and engaged in a number of training programs that we have,” which is why McNeil noted that “it’s not a surprise to us that he had access to weapons.”
“You are my war club, my weapon for battle; with you I shatter nations, with you I destroy kingdoms,” Ikner reportedly wrote in an Instagram post that was taken down after he was publicly identified as the accused FSU shooter.
The Youth Advisory Council wasn’t the only club Phoenix Ikner once belonged to. He was also a member of a political club at FSU, that is, until he was removed from the group for allegedly expressing racist views and far-right extremism, which essentially go hand-in-hand.
“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,” FSU student Reid Seybold told CNN.
“It’s been a couple of years now. I can’t give exact quotes,” Seybold said. “He talked about the ravages of multiculturalism and communism and how it’s ruining America.”
In January, just before the inauguration of President Donald Trump, Ikner was quoted in an FSU student newspaper article about anti-Trump protests that erupted ahead of Trump’s swearing in.
“These people are usually pretty entertaining, usually not for good reasons,” Ikner said. “I think it’s a little too late, he’s already going to be inaugurated on Jan. 20 and there’s not really much you can do unless you outright revolt, and I don’t think anyone wants that.”
The New York Post shed more light on exactly the kind of racist and far-right ideas Phoenix Ikner allegedly spread.
From the Post:
Alleged Florida State University shooter Phoenix Ikner touted vile white supremacist views that raised serious concerns among his classmates — including that “Rosa Parks was in the wrong” and that black people were destroying his community.
Ikner, who allegedly killed two people and wounded six others when he opened fire on campus Thursday, horrified other students with his “gross” racial rhetoric.
One classmate from Ikner’s former school, Tallahassee State College, recalled how he was asked to leave a “political roundtable” club over his hate speech.
“Basically our only rule was no Nazis — colloquially speaking — and he espoused so much white supremacist rhetoric, and far-right rhetoric as well, to the point where we had to exercise that rule,” Reid Seybold told the Tallahassee Democrat.
Another classmate said Phoenix Ikner was vocal in their federal politics class, promoting his disturbing views about black people, as well as far-right conspiracy theories, such as that former President Joe Biden was fraudulently elected.
His opinions were so troubling that the classmate, Lucas Luzietti, chillingly remembered thinking that “this man should not have access to firearms.”
“I got into arguments with him in class over how gross the things he said were,” Luzietti told USA Today.
“What are you supposed to do? His mother was a cop, and Florida doesn’t have very strong red flag laws.”
Source: Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo / Getty
Jessica Inker isn’t Phoenix’s biological mother. In fact, Phoenix Inker isn’t even his birth name. According to an affidavit, Inker was born Christian Eriksen, and his biological mother, who hasn’t been named publicly, was convicted of removing him from the US in violation of a custody agreement when he was 10 years old.
From CNN:
According to an affidavit from a sheriff’s detective, the child’s biological mother told his father that she would take him to South Florida for spring break in March 2015. Instead, she “fled the country with him in violation of their custody agreement,” taking him to Norway, the affidavit said.
The suspect’s biological mother pleaded no contest to removing a minor from the state against a court order. She was sentenced to 200 days in jail, 170 of which she had already served, followed by two years of “community control” and then two years of probation, according to court records. She was ordered to have no contact during her sentence with her son or any of his teachers, doctors or counselors, unless allowed by a court.
She later moved to vacate her plea, saying she had made it under duress, and was denied.
Just after the shooting occurred, Phoenix Inker’s biological mother reportedly posted on Facebook that his father hadn’t responded when she wrote him “to ask if everything is alright with my son, who studies at FSU.”
Law enforcement officials reported that after the shooting, Ikner failed to comply with commands and was shot before being taken into police custody. He has been hospitalized with “serious but non-life-threatening injuries” as of Thursday night.
SEE ALSO:
Former Professor Teaches Non-Whitewashed Black History Under A Tree At Florida International University
Karen Gets Arrested After Racial Attack On Florida Cops Who Were Initially Letting Her Leave
What We Know About Alleged FSU Shooter Phoenix Ikner
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