Two people died, and six were hospitalized after a shooting at Florida State University’s student union Thursday.
The two victims who were killed were not students, FSU Police Chief Jason Trumbower said in a press conference.
The alleged gunman is 20-year-old Phoenix Ikner, an FSU student and the son of Leon County Deputy Jessica Ikner. He was hospitalized after being shot by law enforcement for not complying with commands.
Ikner — whose mother has worked with the Leon County Sheriff’s Office for over 18 years — is a long-standing member of LCSO’s youth advisory council and has participated in a number of LCSO training programs. Ikner had access to his mother’s personal handgun, which was found at the crime scene, LCSO Sheriff Walter McNeil said during the press conference.
The university is cooperating with the investigation, FSU President Richard McCullough said during Thursday’s press conference.
“We’re a strong and united community. We’re family. And so we’ll take care of all of you, and we’ll get through this together,” he said.
Gov. Ron DeSantis posted a video on X Thursday evening condemning the shooter’s actions and thanking law enforcement.
“This killer must and will be brought to justice to the fullest extent of the law,” he said. “I want to also thank the law enforcement personnel who were on the scene both for the university as well as for the city of Tallahassee. They ran towards the danger. We’re all Seminoles today.”
President Donald Trump said he had been fully briefed on the situation before his meeting with the Italian prime minister in the Oval Office Thursday afternoon. Trump called the shooting “a horrible thing” and “a shame,” but said he would not advocate for new gun legislation, according to the Associated Press.
“I have an obligation to protect the Second Amendment,” he said, per AP.
The university’s alert system sent out its first message just after noon, stating an active shooter was near the student union, and law enforcement was on the scene. It advised those on campus to shelter in place. The university sent out subsequent alerts at 12:20 p.m. and 12:40 p.m. notifying faculty and students to stay sheltered, and said law enforcement was still responding to an active shooter at the student union.
Around 1 p.m., FSU sent another alert notifying students law enforcement was clearing the main campus and using a safe word to evacuate buildings and classrooms.
Shortly after 3 p.m., the university’s alert system lifted the campus lockdown, but FSU officials asked students and faculty to avoid the student union and several other buildings and treat them as active crime scenes. Law enforcement believes Ikner was acting alone, so there is no active threat to the community, according to the Tallahassee Police Chief Lawrence Revell.
Thursday’s shooting was not the first in FSU’s history. In 2014, three people were shot at FSU’s Strozier Library by graduate Myron May. Police responded to the scene two minutes after receiving a call about the first shot. Police shot and killed May as he reloaded his gun and tried to enter the library.
One student, Farhan Ahmed, was paralyzed from the waist down after a bullet hit his spine. Nathan Scott, a Strozier Library employee at the time, was shot in the leg, and an unnamed student was grazed by the bullet.
Firsthand accounts
At 12:02 p.m., 21-year-old FSU psychology student Cameron Popovics was taking an exam about half a mile away from the university’s student union.
When she heard an alarm, her mind immediately gravitated toward a fire alarm, until voices over the intercom told her there was an active shooter.
She froze.
While her fellow classmates moved around her, throwing tables that just moments before held exams, a student grabbed her and pulled her down to the floor to take shelter.
“My nervous system was just shocked. I was in shock, I had no clue what was happening and I was so scared,” Popovics said. “My instincts were just gone.”
For almost two hours, she hid in her classroom without knowing what was happening.
While sheltered, Popovics said she tried to find any information she could — whether that was through people texting her or news articles.
“None of my texts were going through, the people next to me, their texts weren’t going through,” she said.
Almost two hours and four FSU alerts later, her classroom was evacuated at 1:52 p.m. by an officer who yelled “Seminole” through the door — a safeword meant to inform anyone inside it was safe to open the door.
Evacuated students were taken to Stadium Drive and West Call Street, then bussed to a reunification point at the Donald L. Tucker Civic Center. After evacuating, Popovics said she had her boyfriend pick her up.
“I kept having to ask my boyfriend how long I’d been in there, because I just had no concept of time,” she said. “It was just endless waiting, we didn’t know when they [police officers] were coming. We didn’t know how they were going to come get us.”
Another FSU student, 21-year-old sports management student Joey Morris, was at his off-campus apartment, U-Club, waiting to go to his 12:30 p.m. class when he received the first FSU alert.
On any other day, he would have been inside the student union at noon, but his earlier class had been canceled.
“I definitely would have been in the area,” he said. “I mean, I go there every day.”
With his apartment and other student housing just minutes away, the student union is a central part of FSU’s campus, he said.
“It’s how we walk to the bars, it’s how we walk to class, it’s any event we pass the union,” he said.
Brileyann Eldridge was getting ready for class when texts from her friends and family started flooding her phone. Then, she received updates from the university alert system about the active shooter.
The 21-year-old FSU behavioral neuroscience junior lives a stone’s throw from the student union, where the shooting started. If she had left her building 10 minutes earlier, she might have crossed paths with the gunman, she said.
Eldridge didn’t hear any gunshots, but the police sirens outside her building were jarring, she said. That’s when the gravity of the situation sank in.
“It was kind of just that cold realization that people are being hurt right now, people [have to] run for their lives,” she said.
Some of Eldridge’s friends are struggling to cope with the shock, she said. One was shaking and another was crying when she saw them after the shooting.
The damage to the university community is likely irreparable, Eldridge added.
“You can’t fully recover from something like this, especially if people are hurt, people die, you can’t just wipe your hands clean of it,” she said. “It will have a permanent scar on our legacy.”
FSU anthropology and history junior Philip Allison works at the student union and was scheduled for a shift Thursday night. The 20-year-old said he heard gunshots, which he initially thought were construction sounds, while walking back to his dorm from a dining hall.
Allison said his roommate was inside the building when the shooting started and had to run to safety.
Some students are packing up their cars and leaving Tallahassee, Allison added. But he wants to go about life as usual and maintain a sense of normalcy.
“The event today just feels like an anomaly,” Allison said. “I’m not going to avoid the union; I still work there, [and] I’m going to go back as soon as it’s open.”
FSU, FAMU cancel classes
The university canceled all classes and business operations on its main Tallahassee campus through Friday. All FSU home athletic events for the weekend have been canceled.
Florida A&M University, which sits just 10 minutes south of FSU’s main campus, has also canceled classes and student activities through April 18. University employees were given the option to work remotely for the remainder of the day.
According to Gun Violence Archive, the FSU shooting is the sixth mass shooting to happen in Florida and the 81st in the U.S. in 2025.
The FBI is encouraging members of the public to reach out with any tips they may have.
This is an Alligator staff report.
