LEILA FADEL, HOST:
In Florida, police have a 20-year-old man in custody after a shooting at Florida State University that left two dead and six people injured - one critically.
A MART脥NEZ, HOST:
The person arrested was a student at the school and the son of a sheriff's deputy. He allegedly used his mother's gun in the shooting.
FADEL: NPR's Greg Allen is following the events in Tallahassee and joins us now. Good morning, Greg.
GREG ALLEN, BYLINE: Hi, Leila.
FADEL: Sadly, this kind of violence feels familiar in the U.S. What happened on this campus?
ALLEN: Well, it began around noon yesterday on Florida State University's campus in the center of Tallahassee, the Florida State Capitol. A campus-wide alert went out that an active shooter was reported near the student union building. Police responded quickly and began evacuating students. It sent the whole campus into lockdown. Students locked themselves in basements and bathrooms while they heard gunshots being fired outside. Here's FSU freshman Craig Jacobsen.
CRAIG JACOBSEN: So I was, like, barricaded in a room. And then there was police knocking everywhere, and we got brought into another room. I mean, still, everything's going crazy, and we still don't know what's going on. We have no idea what's going on. And they said we can go back, but, like, how do I know the campus is safe?
ALLEN: By 3 p.m. yesterday, law enforcement said the campus had been secured and the threat was over. But it left two people dead, several others wounded. Police say the shooter didn't surrender when they confronted him, and he was shot and wounded before being arrested.
FADEL: And the man arrested is the son of the sheriff's deputy?
ALLEN: Yeah, that's right. Police identified him as 20-year-old Phoenix Ikner. His mother is an 18-year veteran of the Leon County Sheriff's Department. Leon County Sheriff Walter McNeil spoke at a news conference yesterday.
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WALTER MCNEIL: Unfortunately, her son had access to one of her weapons, and that was one of the weapons that was found at the scene. And we will continue our investigation into how that weapon was used and what other weapons, perhaps, he may have had access to.
ALLEN: Police also recovered a shotgun at the scene, but they don't believe it was used in the shooting. McNeil said Phoenix Ikner was a member of the sheriff's department youth advisory board, and he'd gone through extensive training with the sheriff's department.
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MCNEIL: This event is tragic in more ways than you, people in the audience, could ever phantom from a law enforcement perspective. But I will tell you this - we will make sure that we do everything we can to prosecute.
ALLEN: We don't have a motive at this point. Police say that he wouldn't talk to them after his arrest.
FADEL: Now, this campus is very close to Florida's State Capitol. What's the reaction been?
ALLEN: In Washington, President Trump said he was briefed on the shootings and called them horrible. When asked about stricter gun laws, he said he would always protect the Second Amendment. Florida's governor, Ron DeSantis, said, we are all Seminoles today, which is, of course, the school mascot. Florida State University President Richard McCullough visited some of the shooting victims at the hospital and said counseling was available for students and faculty.
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RICHARD MCCULLOUGH: We're a strong and united community. We're a family. And so we'll take care of all of you, and we'll get through this together.
ALLEN: Now, this isn't the first shooting on the FSU campus, of course. In 2014, a gunman fired into a crowded library there, wounding three people before he was killed by police. And following that shooting, and just about every year since, Republican lawmakers have filed bills to allow concealed weapons on campuses in Florida. This shooting will probably revive that debate. But some of the FSU students who were evacuated during the shooting yesterday were high school students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas in Parkland, where there was that horrific shooting seven years ago. So I think that will also be something to be considered.
FADEL: That's NPR's Greg Allen. Thank you, Greg.
ALLEN: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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