TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Amid the abandoned chemistry notes and other debris left behind after a deadly shooting at Florida State University are lingering questions about how the stepson of a beloved sheriff’s deputy tasked with school safety at a middle school became the accused gunman.
Political science student Phoenix Ikner was a long-standing member of a sheriff’s office youth advisory council and was steeped in the family-like culture of the agency. When officers rushed to the university’s student union on reports of gunfire, authorities say it was the 20-year-old who used his stepmother’s former service weapon to open fire, killing two men and wounding six others.
Click to Gallery
Law enforcement officers gather after a shooting at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Fla., Thursday, April 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Gary McCullough)
A Florida State University sign is displayed in Tallahassee, Fla., Thursday, April 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Gary McCullough)
An impromptu memorial shared online brings students bearing flowers into the evening near the center of the Florida State campus in sight of the Student Union building, Tallahassee, Fla., Thursday, April 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Gary McCullough)
Students wait to retrieve their personal items from the Florida State Student Union building, Tallahassee, Fla., Friday, April 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Gary McCullough)
A student mourns during a vigil on the Florida State campus at Langford Green, Tallahassee, Fla., Friday, April 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Gary McCullough)
Florida State University Student Union building after campus is closed following a shooting, in Tallahassee, Fla., Thursday, April 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Gary McCullough)
Student Ethan Cheng retrieves his sunglasses, computer and backpack that he left inside the Florida State Student Union building at the time of the shooting, in Tallahassee, Fla., Friday, April 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Gary McCullough)
People sit in front of a makeshift memorial outside the student union at Florida State University, Thursday, April 17, 2025, in Tallahassee, Fla., following a campus shooting. (AP Photo/Kate Payne)
Crime scene vehicle at the Woodward Avenue entrance to the Florida State University campus after a shooting, in Tallahassee, Fla., Thursday, April 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Gary McCullough)
As people fled in terror, Ikner was shot and taken into custody. He invoked his right not to speak to investigators, and his motive remains unknown as he lies in a hospital bed.
The prosecutor's office is weighing possible charges as stories emerge about a darker side. One classmate recalled him being kicked out of a student club over comments that other members found troubling.
“This is horrific,” Jimmy Williams, the chief of safety for Leon County Schools, said of the shooting. “This is a horrible, horrible event.”
Williams, who has known Ikner’s stepmother, Jessica Ikner, for a decade, said the allegations underscore that “none of us are immune to tragedy.”
Classes and business operations will resume Monday, Florida State announced over the weekend.
“I know it won’t feel like a normal week," FSU President Richard McCullough said in message to students and employees Saturday. "It’s the last one before finals, and many of you are still processing what happened. Please take care of yourself.”
His stepmother, whose own alma mater is Florida State, was reassigned from her position as a school resource officer Friday and granted the personal leave she requested, a sheriff’s office spokesperson told The Associated Press.
When the alert went out of an active shooter at Florida State University, Jessica Ikner was on duty around 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) away at Raa Middle School. A sheriff’s office spokesperson said Jessica Ikner worked to secure the campus to prevent anyone from entering as Raa went into “lockout mode," along with all of the county’s public schools. She was practiced at this work.
Last year, she was named an “employee of the month” by the sheriff’s office, where she has worked for 18 years.
Police said they believed Phoenix Ikner shot the victims using his stepmother’s former service handgun, which she had kept for personal use after the force upgraded its weapons.
Leon County Sheriff Walter McNeil described Phoenix Ikner on Thursday as having been “steeped in the Leon County Sheriff’s Office family” and engaged in a number of sheriff’s office training programs, adding that it wasn’t a surprise that he would have access to guns.
There was no record of him having a criminal record. And in Florida, training and a background check are not required to carry concealed guns in public.
When Ikner was a child, his parents were involved in several custody disputes with his biological mother, court records show.
In 2015, when he was 10, his biological mother, Anne-Mari Eriksen, said she was taking him to South Florida for spring break in 2015 but instead traveled to Norway. After returning to the U.S., she pleaded no contest to removing a minor from the state against a court order and was sentenced to 200 days in jail. She later moved to vacate her plea, but that was denied.
In the fall of that same year, Eriksen filed a civil libel-slander complaint against Jessica Ikner, along with several other family members. The complaint, which was later dismissed, accused them of harassing Eriksen and abusing Ikner’s position at the sheriff’s office.
In 2020, at age 15, the suspect received court approval to change his name from Christian Eriksen to Phoenix Ikner, court documents show. His old name was a constant reminder of a “tragedy” he suffered, in the words of administrative magistrate James Banks, who approved the request, NBC News reported.
Banks observed that Ikner was a “mentally, emotionally and physically mature young adult who is very articulate” and “very polite” said he chose the new name as a representation of “rising from the ashes anew.”
Reid Seybold and his classmates were working on a group project in a building located a short, three-minute walk from the student union when someone ran in and warned them about the gunfire. They huddled together, the 22-year-old said, frantically firing off what they thought might be their final text messages to loved ones.
When Seybold found out who the suspect in the shooting was — that it was someone he knows — he was overcome with anger. Seybold was the president of a club that Phoenix Ikner joined when they were both studying at the local community college, now called Tallahassee State College.
“He would complain about Black people pretty regularly, especially when conversations of police brutality would come up,” Seybold said.
Seybold said Ikner was known for espousing racist and white supremacist views that so alienated other members that the club asked him to leave the group.
“He made people that uncomfortable,” said Seybold, who now also is studying political science at Florida State. “I personally know him to have complained about how multiculturalism and communism are ruining America.”
A key part of the investigation will likely focus on what might have led to what experts call the “pathway to violence,” said Kenneth Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services, a Cleveland-based consulting firm.
“The question is, what was the motivation, what was the grievance?,” said Trump, who wrote the book “Practical School Security: Basic Guidelines for Safe and Secure Schools.” (He's not related to the U.S. president).
“Usually, they build up over time through some type of grievance against people," Trump said. “The questions in the upcoming days are, were there warning signs, what were those warnings signs, and if they were there, who knew?”
Ikner transferred to Florida State after earning an associate degree at the community college, school officials said.
He didn't attract the attention of the school paper, other than commenting in a FSU story about a rally on campus against President Donald Trump.
Ikner, a registered Republican, described the protesters as “entertaining” because Trump was already set to be inaugurated. The comments have since been removed from the story, an editor's note saying the move was to “avoid amplifying the voice of an individual responsible for violence.”
Before Ikner’s Instagram was taken down, his bio quoted a verse from the Old Testament book of Jeremiah. “Thou art my battle ax and weapons of war: for with thee will I break in pieces the nations, and with thee will I destroy kingdoms,” reads Jeremiah 51:20, which scholars have interpreted to depict God’s judgment on Babylon. The empire is a symbol in the Bible of sinfulness and immorality.
A Tallahassee Police Department patrol car was stationed Thursday evening near the street where the family lives, blocking reporters from approaching the family’s home in a well-kept suburban neighborhood on the city’s east side.
Phone messages left for Jessica Ikner at a number listed for her on a school resource website and another phone connected to her through public records were not immediately returned Friday. And a sheriff’s office spokeswoman said she is not aware of the family putting out a statement or having a family spokesperson.
The only insight comes from the past statements. Nearly a decade ago, Jessica Ikner wrote a story posted on the Tallahassee Family Magazine website about children’s safety while surfing the internet, including tips to strengthen family bonds.
“Build a trusting relationship with your child," she wrote. "Let them know that if they do make a mistake they can still come to you about anything.”
Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kansas. Associated Press writers Curt Anderson in Tallahassee, David Fischer and Freida Frisaro in Fort Lauderdale, Stephany Matat in West Palm Beach, Michael Schneider in Orlando, Mike Balsamo in New York, Eric Tucker and Christopher Megerian in Washington, John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, and Jeff Martin in Atlanta contributed.
Law enforcement officers gather after a shooting at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Fla., Thursday, April 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Gary McCullough)
A Florida State University sign is displayed in Tallahassee, Fla., Thursday, April 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Gary McCullough)
An impromptu memorial shared online brings students bearing flowers into the evening near the center of the Florida State campus in sight of the Student Union building, Tallahassee, Fla., Thursday, April 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Gary McCullough)
Students wait to retrieve their personal items from the Florida State Student Union building, Tallahassee, Fla., Friday, April 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Gary McCullough)
A student mourns during a vigil on the Florida State campus at Langford Green, Tallahassee, Fla., Friday, April 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Gary McCullough)
Florida State University Student Union building after campus is closed following a shooting, in Tallahassee, Fla., Thursday, April 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Gary McCullough)
Student Ethan Cheng retrieves his sunglasses, computer and backpack that he left inside the Florida State Student Union building at the time of the shooting, in Tallahassee, Fla., Friday, April 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Gary McCullough)
People sit in front of a makeshift memorial outside the student union at Florida State University, Thursday, April 17, 2025, in Tallahassee, Fla., following a campus shooting. (AP Photo/Kate Payne)
Crime scene vehicle at the Woodward Avenue entrance to the Florida State University campus after a shooting, in Tallahassee, Fla., Thursday, April 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Gary McCullough)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been thrown into two top national security jobs at once as President Donald Trump presses forward with his top-to-bottom revamp of U.S. foreign policy, upending not only longstanding policies that the former Florida senator once supported but also the configuration of the executive branch.
Trump's appointment of Rubio to temporarily replace Mike Waltz as national security adviser is the first major leadership shake-up of the nascent administration, but Waltz's removal had been rumored for weeks — ever since he created a Signal group chat and accidentally added a journalist to the conversation where top national security officials shared sensitive military plans.
So, just over 100 days into his tenure as America’s top diplomat, Rubio now becomes just the second person to hold both positions. He follows only the late Henry Kissinger, who served as both secretary of state and national security adviser for two years under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford in the 1970s.
Rubio — a one-time Trump rival and hawkish conservative who was derided by the president as “Little Marco” during the 2016 presidential campaign — has proven adept at aligning himself with Trump’s “America First” foreign policy positions. Rubio has largely eschewed his staunch advocacy of providing foreign aid and promoting democracy overseas since taking over the State Department, repeating a refrain that every policy or program should make America safer, stronger or more prosperous.
Since being confirmed in a 99-0 Senate floor vote, Rubio has presided over a radical reorganization of the State Department. That includes the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development and plans to cut U.S. jobs by 15% while closing or consolidating more than 100 bureaus worldwide. He has also begun a major cull of the visa system, revoking hundreds, if not thousands, of visas issued to foreign students.
He has overseen the negotiation of agreements to send immigrants accused of crimes to third countries, most notably to El Salvador, in cases that are now being challenged in federal courts.
“Marco Rubio, unbelievable," Trump said Thursday before announcing on social media that Waltz would be nominated as ambassador to the United Nations and Rubio would take over as national security adviser in the interim. "When I have a problem, I call up Marco, he gets it solved.”
That's a far cry from 2016, when Rubio and Trump were competing for the GOP presidential nomination and Rubio warned that Trump was a threat. After Trump won, the relationship remained contentious, but eight years later, Rubio was an enthusiastic Trump supporter who worked his Florida bona fides to get into the president's inner circle.
Yet, even after Rubio was nominated to the top diplomatic job, doubts remained. Many pundits suggested he would last only a short time in office before Trump dismissed him in the same way he did his first-term secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, who was fired by tweet in 2018 just 18 months into the job.
Yet Rubio has been resilient. And as of Thursday, he oversees both the State Department and the National Security Council, which is responsible for coordinating all executive branch foreign policy functions, ranging from diplomatic to military and intelligence operations.
Thomas Wright, an NSC official during the Biden administration who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said the national security adviser post alone is “more than a full-time job.”
“It is just very hard to comprehend the idea that you can do this job sort of part time,” Wright said.
He said he watched national security adviser Jake Sullivan and his deputy work 14-15 hour days, six to seven days a week: “I think they felt that they had to do that to do the job properly.”
Appearing Thursday night on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity," Rubio was not asked to weigh in on the president’s decision to tap him as national security adviser but did joke that he was barred from adding pope to his list of many jobs because he is married.
But as he marked the first 100 days of Trump's latest term, Rubio applauded the president for his vision.
“I am honored by the trust President Trump placed in me and I am proud of the work the Department of State has done over the past hundred days to implement his agenda and put the American people first,” he wrote Wednesday in a State Department Substack post.
One of Rubio’s former Florida statehouse colleagues, Dan Gelber, a Democrat, said of Rubio's increasing responsibilities that "Marco is probably, to a certain extent, one of the more reliable Cabinet officers, if not the most reliable."
“And I can only believe those qualities are even more vital to his current confluence of positions and growing portfolio,” Gelber said. "He’s not a chaos guy, and I’ve always sort of wondered how he’s going to do in an administration where there seems to be so much chaos. And maybe that’s why he’s getting all these positions.”
Rubio's dual-hatted role comes on top of him serving as acting administrator of the largely shut down USAID and as acting head of the National Archives. It puts him in a similar position to that of Trump's longtime personal friend and golfing buddy Steve Witkoff.
As a special envoy, Witkoff is the lead U.S. negotiator in the Iran nuclear talks and in administration peace efforts for the Israel-Hamas war and the Ukraine-Russia war.
In many ways, Rubio and Witkoff are following in the footsteps of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who had multiple roles in the first administration, ranging from the Middle East to Latin America and immigration.
State Department officials appeared taken aback by Trump's appointment of Rubio as acting national security adviser. Spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said at a briefing Thursday that she learned the news from a journalist who asked her a question about Trump's post minutes after it appeared on social media.
Officials, however, have noted that Rubio in recent weeks has spent an increasingly large amount of time at the White House away from his posh seventh-floor State Department office in what is known as “Mahogany Row,” a corridor known for its wood paneling.
At the same time, these officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the personnel shift, said they did not expect Rubio's duties as secretary of state to change significantly. He still plans to travel on diplomatic missions abroad and likely will delegate at least some of the NSC management to others, they said.
Amiri reported from the United Nations.
President Donald Trump speaks as House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., from front row left, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and from front row right, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent listen during a National Day of Prayer event in the Rose Garden of the White House, Thursday, May 1, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., from left, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick listen as President Donald Trump speaks during a National Day of Prayer event in the Rose Garden of the White House, Thursday, May 1, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
President Donald Trump speaks during a bilateral luncheon with Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Thursday, April 24, 2025, in Washington. With the President from left are National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
National Security Advisor Mike Waltz speaks during a television interview at the White House, Thursday, May 1, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, right, stands with French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot at the State Department, Thursday, May 1, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Secretary of State Marco Rubio attends a National Day of Prayer event in the Rose Garden of the White House, Thursday, May 1, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House, Wednesday, April 30, 2025, in Washington, as President Donald Trump look on. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)