A 20-year-old Florida State University student and son of a Leon County sheriff’s deputy is accused of killing two people and wounding five others on campus with a handgun that belonged to his mother.
The tragedy on the university’s campus in Tallahassee on Thursday occurred just over a year after the father and mother of a teenager who killed four students in a 2021 school shooting in Oxford, Michigan, were each sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison – the first parents to be held criminally responsible for a mass school shooting committed by their child.
In Michigan, prosecutors used a novel and unusual legal theory to bring manslaughter charges, accusing the killer’s parents – James and Jennifer Crumbley – of disregarding the risks when they bought a gun for their son days before the shooting, even though he was struggling with his mental health and contemplating violence.
The boundaries of who’s responsible for a mass school shooting continued to be pushed with the indictment last year of the father of an alleged Georgia school shooter.
Whether the mother of alleged FSU shooter Phoenix Ikner can be charged criminally “is going to depend on a lot of information we currently do not have,” Misty Marris, a trial attorney and legal analyst, told CNN.
Marris said Florida prosecutors would have to consider a number of critical questions, among them: How did the alleged shooter access his mother’s gun? Did she let him use it? Did she know or should have known that he had a propensity for violence? Were there warning signs he would use a gun to shoot someone? Did she know he could access the gun?
“This is particularly important because if there was an awareness that he may be violent and the gun was left accessible then there could certainly be legal consequences for his mother on a civil negligence or possibly criminal negligence theory,” Marris said.
Jack Campbell, state attorney for the Second Judicial Circuit, declined comment on Saturday.
Ikner, who spent time training with law enforcement and served on a sheriff’s advisory council in the years before the shooting, was taken into custody after being shot and injured by university police on Thursday. He was carrying a .45 caliber pistol that used to be the service weapon of sheriff’s deputy Jessica Ikner, according to officials and records.
After the shooting, police recovered an AR-15 style rifle – in addition to the pistol and a shotgun found at the scene – inside the car Phoenix Ikner drove to campus, according to a law enforcement official familiar with the ongoing investigation. The multiple firearms indicate he may have intended to shoot more people, the official said.
The suspected gunman suffered from emotional dysregulation for which he had been prescribed medication, according to the law enforcement source. Family members told investigators he had stopped taking some of the prescribed medication, the source said. It’s too soon to say whether this played a role in Thursday’s violence. The motive is still unknown, and police said there’re no apparent connections between the suspect and the victims.
Ikner has “significant” but not life-threatening injuries and “will remain in the hospital for a significant amount of time” before he is taken to a detention facility, Tallahassee Police Chief Lawrence Revell said Friday.
The suspect, who invoked his right not to speak when he was taken into custody, “will face the charges up to and including first degree murder” once he is released from the hospital and taken to a detention facility, Revell said in a video message.
‘It’s all about what was known and when’
Since the shooting, Ikner’s former classmates at Tallahassee State College have described his political beliefs as extreme. They cited what they said was “concerning rhetoric,” including his saying civil rights icon Rosa Parks was “in the wrong,” his defense of Nazi symbols, and his disparaging of pro-Palestinian and Black Lives Matter protesters. It’s unclear if politics was a factor in the shooting.
Additionally, a review of court records showed Phoenix Ikner had a tumultuous childhood, with a woman — identified in the documents as his biological mother — accused of removing him from the United States in violation of a custody agreement when he was 10 years old.
Sheriff Walter McNeil told reporters the suspect was “steeped in the Leon County Sheriff’s Office family and engaged in a number of training programs that we have, so it’s not a surprise to us that he had access to weapons.”
“This is telling and leads me to believe that it was known that the alleged shooter knew how to use a gun, and had access,” Marris told CNN via email.
“Now if it turns out that there was some knowledge that he might commit a horrible act like this or had mental health issues that could make him dangerous or if we find he made statements or wrote about committing a mass shooting … what actions were taken to limit access by his mother to her weapons? It’s all about what was known and when.”
Jessica Ikner has served at the sheriff’s department for more than 18 years, McNeil said, adding that “her service to this community has been exceptional.” She did not respond to a request for comment.
The sheriff’s office said Jessica Ikner requested and was granted personal leave and was also transferred to the property crimes. She previously served as a school resource officer, McNeil told reporters Thursday.
Joey Jackson, a CNN legal analyst, said prosecutors deciding on whether to bring charges would focus on what the parent did not do, and whether that makes her responsible.
“What factually was the parent aware of, and what specifically did they do and not do that contributed to this occurring?” he added. “What did they know and what did they not know as to this occurring? What was the mental status of the kid? Do they have a prior history? Have they done anything like this before?”
Florida-based defense attorney Walter O’Mara said a civil lawsuit against the suspect and his mother is more likely.
Florida law “does hold parents responsible but only for minors 16 and under,” he said, noting that the FSU suspect is 20. “So no, they really don’t have a way to criminally hold the mom responsible. Now, if it was really negligent, like, you know, the kid’s got mental health problems and they’re leaving six or eight guns around and encouraging him to shoot in the backyard – that kind of stuff – you might get some criminal negligence, but I don’t think you have that here.”
CNN’s Casey Tolan, John Miller, Curt Devine, Audrey Ash, Rebekah Riess, Hanna Park, Devon Sayers, Majilie de Puy Kamp, Yahya Abou-Ghazala, Mike Figliola, Taylor Romine and Dahlia Faheid contributed to this report.
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