After the Florida State shooting yesterday that left two people dead and five injured, details are beginning to trickle out about who the shooter was. And in this case, the details are a bit more unusual than most.
The shooter was identified Thursday afternoon as Phoenix Ikner, a 20-year-old who was described as the son of a sheriff’s deputy and had used his mother’s gun in the killing.
But according to The Daily Mail, a different woman, Anne-Mari Eriksen, has come forward and identified herself as Ikner’s biological mother.
This shooter at FSU clearly was mentally destroyed by his family. They along with him should bear blame. He was yanked around like a toy in a game. No wonder he snapped. He needed help. Prayers for the victims families. Just sad https://t.co/f7FukClVNz
— Russell Johnson (@FreeAme19691836) April 18, 2025
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‘Horrible when your alienating son’s dad is as mentally unstable as he is, along with his LCSO cop wife, that they can’t respond when you write to ask if everything is alright with my son, who studies ar [sic] FSU,” the woman wrote in a Facebook post that has since been deleted, presumably before she was aware that Ikner was the shooter. “‘That whole familly [sic] is nuts. He should write a book on how to parent badly, but he can’t communicate.”
She added “Feel sorry for everyone at FSU and their kids.”
It appeared that there had been a custody dispute between her and Ikner’s father.
CNN reported more about the background of Ikner, who survived the shooting and was taken into custody. The accused shooter “had a tumultuous childhood, with another woman — identified in the documents as his biological mother — accused of removing him from the US in violation of a custody agreement when he was 10 years old.”
He was also often around his stepmother’s sheriff’s department, law enforcement told the media outlet. He grew up “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,” Sheriff Walter McNeill told the media.
Ikner was a registered Republican, although there’s no indication he had a political or ideological motive for the killings. The CNN story added that he was part of a “political club,” but was asked to leave that club “due to behavior that unsettled others.”
Another student said that Ikner, at that club, “talked about the ravages of multiculturalism and communism and how it’s ruining America.”
Photo courtesy of X screenshot.
