- Gunman was identified as Phoenix Ekner, the son of the police.
- The suspect had access to the mother’s former service weapon.
- The second FSU campus was shot after the incident in 11 years.
Officials said two people killed by the son of a deputy Sheriff and injured four others at Florida State University on Thursday, before he was shot by the authorities and hospitalized, the officials said.
Police believe that the gunman – the son of a Leon County Sheriff Deputy worked alone and one of the motives was not known. The suspect had access to his mother’s handgun, once his service weapon. He bought it from the department and it is now a personal gun, he said.
“Unfortunately, his son had access to a weapon that was found on the spot,” Leon County Sheriff Walter McNell said at the press conference.
The 20-year-old was identified as suspected-fiinix Ekner-he was a student at FSU in Talhasi’s state capital, said Jason Trombover, head of the university police force. Two people killed were not students. Trombover did not provide details to four others who were shot and injured.
Officials said the police officials shot the gunman when he failed to follow the orders to surrender and took him into custody, the officials said. Four injured victims, as well as the gunman, were rushed to the hospital with a gun bullet wound.
Large -scale firing in American school complexes has become repetitive tragedies in recent years. Thursday’s incident was second shooting in the FSU campus in 11 years. In 2014, a graduate set fire to the school’s main library early, injuring two students and one employee as hundreds of examinations were studied.
Shooting near the student union building in the FSU campus started local time (1550 GMT) at around 11:50 pm. The police responded and asked the students and faculty to give shelter. More than 42,000 students participate in classes in the main campus.
Student Max Jenkins described the shooter leaving the student union building and firing four or five shot.
Jenkins said in a video on the website of the Talhasi Democrat newspaper, “He saw the maintenance, who was waving everyone and I think it may probably heard and turned and shot him in this way.” “It has a golf cart with a pill hole.”
Chris Pento was on a university tour with his children and used to have lunch in the student union building when shots started coming out.
Pento, referring to his daughter, said, “It was real, people started running. She just rubbed.”
In addition to Handgan, officials believe that a gun was brought to the suspected campus, but said it was uncertain if the weapon was used in shooting.
Recent years notable collective shoots in colleges or universities have included 2007 Virginia Tech massacre in Blacksburg, Virginia, where 32 people were killed and 23 were injured.
In 2023, two colleges were shot at Michigan State University, where three students were killed and at least five others were injured. The second incident appeared at Nevada University, Las Vegas, where three faculty members were killed before the death of a suspect in a firing with the police.
