‘Rosa Parks Was In the Wrong’: Alleged FSU Shooter Known for White Supremacist Views Was Raised in Sheriff’s Office Culture and Worshipped Donald Trump, Reports Show
“Steeped” in the culture of the Leon County Sheriff’s Office, where his stepmother was a longtime deputy, alleged Florida State University shooter Phoenix Ikner was widely known for his racist views, telling classmates that Black people were ruining his community.
Ikner, suspected of killing two people and wounding six others after opening fire on FSU’s campus, also believed civil rights icon “Rosa Parks was in the wrong” when she refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus to a white man.
His opinions were so disturbing that one classmate at Ikner’s former college, Tallahassee State College, recalled 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,” Lucas Luzietti told USA Today.
“What are you supposed to do?” he asked. “His (step) mother was a cop, and Florida doesn’t have very strong red flag laws.”
Police say Ikner was using his mother’s service weapon when he opened fire just before noon Thursday. The gunman emerged from an orange Hummer outside the student union with a firearm and a rifle. One witness described how he icily shot a woman right in front of him.
FSU Police Chief Jason Trumbower said Ikner was able to shoot multiple people before officers were able to neutralize him. He was hospitalized with his injuries, though the severity of his wounds is not yet clear.
Ikner’s views on race came to the surface at a political discussion group he participated in while attending Tallahassee State.
“He espoused so much white supremacist rhetoric and far-right rhetoric” that he was eventually kicked out,” said Ryan Seybold, the group’s president at the time. Like Ikner, Seybold recently transferred to FSU.
Current group president Riley Pusins said the alleged killer was a fierce advocate for President Donald Trump’s agenda and often made “inappropriate comments” that often crossed the line.
Most in the group viewed Ikner as “a fascist.” He liked to remind them he had access to guns, the New York Post reports. Leon County deputies trained him how to shoot while he served on the department’s Youth Advisory Council.
His stepmother, Jessica Ikner, was a school resource deputy at Raa Middle School in Leon County. She was allowed to purchase the weapon her son used for personal use, said Leon County Sheriff Walter A. McNeil.
“He has been steeped in the Leon County Sheriff’s Office family, engaged in a number of training programs that we have,” Sheriff Walter A. McNeil said at a press conference following the shooting. “So it’s not a surprise to us that he had access to weapons.”
The shooting “is tragic in more ways than you people in the audience could ever (fathom),” he said.
Ikner stayed mostly to himself except when it came to politics, said Ian Townsend, 22, who took some classes with the gunman at his previous college.
He often advertised his views on clothing, wearing a National Rifle Association T-shirt and another that included the inscription “Don’t tread on me,” taken from an early American flag, known as the Gadsden Flag, which features a coiled timber rattlesnake ready to strike. The flag was appropriated by the Ku Klux Klan in the last century and regained popularity within the Tea Party movement that vehemently opposed former President Barack Obama in the early 2010s.
On the day after the 2024 presidential election, Ikner walked into their Oceanography class wearing a Donald Trump hat, Townsend said.
His childhood was troubled, as Ikner found himself in the middle of a custody dispute between his biological mother, Anne-Mari Eriksen, and his father. In 2015, when he was 11 years old, his mother kidnapped him and took him to Norway, the Post reports. She had told Phoenix’s father, Christopher Ikner, that she was taking their son to South Florida for spring break.
It would be four months before they returned. Eriksen was arrested after they landed at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. She pleaded no contest to illegally removing a child from Florida.
Three months later, Eriksen filed a lawsuit alleging slander and libel against Christopher Ikner, his wife, Jessica Ikner, as well as two other relatives.
“The emotional and psychological harm done to the minor child will be evident for years, and will require counseling, and given the child being the age of 11, will have memory impacted by the behaviors of all the defendants for the false claims done on his mother, and for the parental alienation of the close relationship of the minor child,” the 2015 lawsuit stated.
Eriksen sought $80,000 in damages to use toward Phoenix’s college fund.
On Thursday, before Phoenix had been publicly identified, Eriksen railed against Phoenix’s father and stepmother for not informing her of their son’s whereabouts.
“Horrible when your alienating son’s dad is as mentally unstable as he is, along with his LCSO cop wife, that they can’t respond when you write to ask if everything is alright with my son, who studies at FSU,” Eriksen wrote on Facebook, as viewed by the Daily Mail. The post has since been deleted.
“That whole familly (sic) is nuts. He should write a book on how to parent badly, but he can’t communicate,” Eriksen said, adding, “Feel sorry for everyone at FSU and their kids.”
After discovering his son had been taken to Norway in 2015, Christopher Ikner alerted authorities. He told police he was particularly worried because his son “has developmental delays and special needs” that he feared would go untreated without the care provided by his doctors at home.
The criminal affidavit he filed stated Phoenix Ikner was “on medication for several health and mental issues, to include a growth hormone disorder and ADHD.”
Police said they have not identified a motive. Trumbower, the FSU police chief, said the two people fatally shot were not students at the school.
One of the two men killed was working in food services at FSU.
People close to the family identified him as Robert Morales, of Miami-Dade County, NBC Miami reports.
His older brother, Ricardo Morales Jr., remembered him in a posting on X.
“He loved his job at FSU and his beautiful Wife and Daughter. I’m glad you were in my Life,” Ricardo Morales said.
Today we lost my younger Brother, He was one of the victims killed at FSU. He loved his job at FSU and his beautiful Wife and Daughter. I’m glad you were in my Life.
Him with our Dad on the left and with our other Brother Sister, Gma and cousin. pic.twitter.com/cD24kEZBSU— Ricardo Morales Jr. (@Rick714Canes) April 18, 2025
Carlos Cruz, a friend of the family for more than 30 years, said Morales was one of the original founders of Gordos Cuban Cuisine, a popular restaurant in Tallahassee. He graduated from Hialeah Senior High School and Florida State University, where he worked as the dining director on campus.