Years before being named suspicious in this week’s fatal shooting at Florida State University, Phoenix Ikner had sought a new start. Traumatized by a complex battle of custody among his parents who had ended up in positions against his mother when he was younger, the then adinate asked Leon’s county circuit court, Florida, a change of legal name.
Ikner appeared at his audience in court in 2020 through videoconference, dressed in his Naval Junior Rotc Junior uniform. An honorary student at high school at that time caused a good impression.
“This court considered a mentally, emotionally and physically mature adult, who is very articulated, quite intelligent, very well spoken and very educated,” administrative magistrate James Banks wrote in his approval of the legal change of the birth name of Ikner, who had been Cristiano Gunnar Eriksen.
Ikner chose to adopt his father’s last name and selected a first name full of symbolism.
“He chose Phoenix’s name due to his representation of the increase in ashes again,” Banks wrote.
The way Ikner went from a teenager with the hope of a new beginning for a 20 -year -old boy accused of killing two people and hurting 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 fought with a fractured family life has emerged and crashed with classmates for their extreme political views.
But a possible reason for mortal violence is not yet known.
Ikner had just transferred to the Florida State University of Tallahassee State College and registered this semester as a student of Political Science. He remains hospitalized with serious but non -mortal injuries of life after the police shot him, police said.
As the investigation expanded on Friday in what led to the shots, the students who knew the accused armed man described him as a young man with problems that he talked openly of having a weapon.
“He would joke about mass violence,” said Lucas Luzietti, who shared a class of the national government with Ikner when he was in Tallahassee State College. “And he talked about how he used weapons and had access to them.”
Luzietti said he once argued with Ikner during the 2020 elections and said his classmates would exchange looks for Ikner’s comments. That included Ikner denying the results of the presidential elections and sharing hate comments about minorities, he added.
“He took advantage of the belief of electoral denial that Joe Biden was not the legitimate president, said Rosa Parks was wrong, he also talked about how black people are ruining their neighborhood and Stonewell was bad for society,” said Luzietti. “I would also talk about how multiculturalism is dangerous.”
Reid Seybold, a last year student at FSU who said he met Ikner in the state of Tallahassee, recalled that Ikner was asked not to return to a club of political discussion in his former university due to the “rhetoric of the white supremacist and the extreme right right.”
The current president of the club, Riley Pusins, said that Ikner often promoted white supremacist values, despite the fact that the group was non -partisan and was about debate and political discourse. After the meetings, Ikner would still comment worse, Pusins said.
NBC News has confirmed the identity of the victims who died in Thursday’s shooting: Robert Morales, 57, and Tiru Chabba, 45. The graduated student of FSU Madison Askins was among the injured; The identities of the other victims wounded have not yet been published.
The authorities said Thursday that they believe that Ikner used a gun that belonged to his stepmother, Jessica Ikner, a deputy of the Lion County Sheriff and a School Resources officer in a Tallahassee high school.
Jessica Ikner and other family members could not be contacted to comment. The documents of the Court, however, detail the difficulties in the education of Ikner, including health problems and a battle for its custody that extended abroad.
In 2015, Ikner’s biological mother, Anne-Mari Eriksen, took him out of the country, violating his agreement with Ikner’s father, Christopher, according to a sworn statement of probable cause of the Leon County Sheriff’s office considered by NBC News. Eriksen had shared the custody of his son, who was 10 or 11 years old and went through his birth name at that time, but he was demanded that he warned advanced if he took Ikner from the United States for spring holidays that year, said the sworn statement, Eriksen had told Christopher Ikner who traveled south of Florida. Instead, she supposedly took her son to Norway, where she and he had double citizenship.
Several weeks after the spring holidays ended, Eriksen had not yet brought the child to the United States to the United States and “had no intention of returning” to Tallahassee, despite his father’s supplications, he added the affidavit.
When Eriksen did not bring Ikner back, Christopher Ikner contacted the authorities to inform his kidnapped son and that he reported that medical care was denied due to delays in development and special needs that had been diagnosed, which included a disorder due to attention/hyperactivity deficit and an hormonal growth disorder, according to the affidavit.
“By keeping Christian in Norway, the defendant could not have Christian at school for scheduled tests, he canceled appointments with Christian’s doctors in the United States and failed to maintain his medication protocols through his own admission,” he 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 damage” to his son for “continuous and vicious litigation in the Family Court.” The ikners could not be contacted to comment.
“Christian Gunnar Eriksen is a victim of psychological and emotional abuse, as well as the alienation of parents. Christopher Ikner enjoys taking credit for the things that Anne-Mari Eriksen has done privately, professional and parents,” reads legal complaint.
Eriksen, who could not be contacted to comment, was ultimately accused of eliminating a minor from the state and not returning a minor, as the records show. He did not advocate and fulfilled a brief jail sentence.
When Phoenix Ikner requested that he legally change his name from Christian Gunnar Eriksen in 2019, which the court approved the following year, his mother opposed the name change, while his father supported him, they show the documents.
Banks, the administrative magistrate who approved the change, wrote: “He does not see any reason to maintain his previous name, since it is a constant reminder of the 2015 tragedy he suffered and his mother with whom he has not seen or spoken since 2015.”
The authorities say that around 11 am on Thursday, Ikner arrived at the FSU parking lot, where he stayed about an hour before walking towards the students’ union. Then he allegedly lurked buildings and Céspedes, shooting his gun indiscriminately to people, the police added.
Panic students fled for their lives and called 911. The officers who responded shot Ikner when he rejected his orders, police said, and the uproar lasted less than five minutes.
After Thursday’s shooting, Ikner has invoked his right to remain silent, police said.
Seybold, who was locked in a classroom and could listen to shots nearby, is anxious for the answers.
“I don’t know why I would have done something like this,” said Seybold. “I don’t know where I would have come from, but surely I would like to find out.”
