The suspect in the Florida State University shooting reportedly shared “white supremacist views” with concerned classmates before yesterday’s attack that killed two people and injured six others.
Phoenix Ikner had a tumultuous childhood, according to court records showing the biological mother of the 20-year-old was accused of removing him from the U.S. when he was 10.
He later changed his name from Christian Eriksen to share the surname of his mother, Leon County Deputy Jessica Ikner, whose former service weapon he used during the shooting, police said.
His biological mother, Anne-Mari Eriksen, told ABC News on Friday that she initially worried he might have been hurt; when he was named a suspect, she “collapsed.”
“There’s so much that needs to be said about this, but I just can’t talk without crying. We need time to process all this,” she said.
Following the attack, a classmate at Ikner’s former school claimed the suspect was told to leave a “political round table” club after he “espoused so much white supremacist rhetoric, and far-right rhetoric as well, to the point where we had to exercise that rule.”
Once Ikner is released from the hospital, where he is expected to be for a while, he’ll be “taken to a local detention facility where he will face the charges up to and including first-degree murder,” Tallahassee Police Chief Lawrence Revell said Friday.
Investigators had not revealed a motive as of Friday evening or released the victims’ identities, but some family members have come forward.
The two victims who lost their lives were identified Friday as Tiru Chabba and Robert Morales. Both men were fathers.