Years before he was named a suspect in this week’s fatal shooting at Florida State University, Phoenix Ikner had sought a new beginning. Traumatized by a complex custody battle between his parents that had ended in charges against his mother when he was younger, the then-teenager asked a Leon County, Florida, circuit court for a legal name change.
Ikner appeared at his court hearing in 2020 via videoconference, dressed in his naval junior ROTC uniform. An honors student in high school at the time, he made a good impression.
“This court found him to be a mentally, emotionally, and physically mature young adult, who is very articulate, quite intelligent, very well spoken, and very polite,” wrote administrative magistrate James Banks in his approval of the legal switch from Ikner’s birth name, which had been Christian Gunnar Eriksen.
Ikner chose to adopt his father’s surname and selected a first name brimming with symbolism.
“He chose the name Phoenix because of its representation of rising from the ashes anew,” Banks wrote.
How Ikner went from a teenager with hopes for a fresh start to a 20-year-old accused of killing two people and injuring at least five others in Thursday’s shooting in Tallahassee is a mystery. In interviews with classmates and reviews of legal documents, a portrait of a young man who struggled with a fractured family life and clashed with classmates over his extreme political views has emerged.
But a possible motive for the deadly violence is not yet known.
Ikner had just transferred to Florida State University from Tallahassee State College and enrolled this semester as a political science major. He remains hospitalized with serious but non-life-threatening injuries after he was shot by law enforcement, police said.
As the investigation widened Friday into what led to the gunfire, students who knew the accused gunman described him as a troubled young man who openly talked about having a weapon.
“He would joke about mass violence,” said Lucas Luzietti, who shared a national government class with Ikner when he was at Tallahassee State College. “And he did talk about how he used guns and had access to them.”
Luzietti said he once argued with Ikner over the 2020 election and said that their classmates would exchange looks over Ikner’s comments. That included Ikner denying the results of the presidential election and sharing hateful comments about minorities, he added.
“He espoused the election denialism belief that Joe Biden was not the legitimate president, he said that Rosa Parks was in the wrong, he also talked about how Black people are ruining his neighborhood and Stonewell was bad for society,” Luzietti said. “He would also talk about how multiculturalism is dangerous.”
Reid Seybold, a senior at FSU who said he first met Ikner at Tallahassee State, recalled Ikner being asked not to return to a political discussion club at his former college because of “white supremacist rhetoric and far-right rhetoric.”
The club’s current president, Riley Pusins, said Ikner often promoted white supremacist values, even though the group was nonpartisan and was about debate and political discourse. After the meetings, Ikner would make even worse remarks, Pusins said.
NBC News has confirmed the identity of the victims who died in Thursday’s shooting: Robert Morales, 57, and Tiru Chabba, 45. FSU grad student Madison Askins was among the injured; the identities of the other wounded victims have not yet been released.
Authorities said Thursday they believe Ikner used a handgun that belonged to his stepmother, Jessica Ikner, a Leon County sheriff’s deputy and a school resource officer at a Tallahassee middle school.
Jessica Ikner and other family members could not be reached for comment. Court documents, however, detail difficulties in Ikner’s upbringing, including health issues and a battle for his custody that stretched overseas.
In 2015, Ikner’s biological mother, Anne-Mari Eriksen, took him out of the country, violating her agreement with Ikner’s father, Christopher, according to a probable cause affidavit from the Leon County Sheriff’s Office viewed by NBC News. Eriksen had shared custody of her son, who was 10 or 11 years old and went by his birth name at the time, but she was required to give advanced notice if she took Ikner out of the U.S. For spring break that year, the affidavit said, Eriksen had told Christopher Ikner they were traveling to South Florida. Instead, she allegedly took their son to Norway, where both she and him had dual citizenship.
Several weeks after spring break ended, Eriksen still had not brought the boy home to the United States and “had no intention of returning” him to Tallahassee, despite pleas from his father, the affidavit added.
When Eriksen did not bring Ikner back, Christopher Ikner contacted authorities to report his son kidnapped and to report that he was being denied medical care for developmental delays and special needs he had been diagnosed with, which included attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and a growth hormone disorder, the affidavit said.
“By keeping Christian in Norway, the defendant failed to have Christian in school for scheduled testing, canceled appointments with Christian’s doctors in the U.S., and failed to maintain his medication protocols by her own admission,” it said.
Later that year, Eriksen filed a lawsuit against Christopher and Jessica Ikner plus two other relatives in the Ikner family for allegedly slandering her and causing “psychological harm” to their son by “continuous and vicious litigation in family court.” The Ikners could not be reached for comment.
“Christian Gunnar Eriksen is the victim of psychological and emotional abuse, as well as parental alienation. Christopher Ikner enjoys taking credit for things that Anne-Mari Eriksen has done privately, professionally and parent wise,” the legal complaint read.
Eriksen, who could not be reached for comment, was ultimately charged with removing a minor from the state and failing to return a minor, records show. She pleaded no contest and served a brief jail sentence.
When Phoenix Ikner petitioned to legally change his name from Christian Gunnar Eriksen in 2019, which the court approved the following year, his mother objected to the name change, while his father supported it, papers show.
Banks, the administrative magistrate who approved the change, wrote: “He sees no reason to keep his former name as it is a constant reminder of the 2015 tragedy he suffered through and of his mother who he has not seen or spoken to since 2015.”
Authorities say that at about 11 a.m. Thursday, Ikner arrived at the FSU parking garage, where he stayed for close to an hour before walking toward the student union. He then allegedly stalked buildings and lawns, firing his handgun indiscriminately at people, police added.
Panicked students fled for their lives and called 911. Responding officers shot Ikner when he refused their commands, police said, with the rampage lasting less than five minutes.
Following Thursday’s shooting, Ikner has invoked his right to remain silent, police said.
Seybold, who was locked down in a classroom and could hear gunfire nearby, is anxious for answers.
“I don’t know why he would have done something like this,” Seybold said. “I don’t know where it would have come from, but I’d sure like to find out.”
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