The son of a Leon County Sheriff’s deputy killed two people at Florida State University and injured six people after accessing his mother’s handgun on Thursday to ride a campus rampage, police said.
Police say the shooter, identified as 20-year-old Phoenix Echner, was shot by officers and taken into custody before being taken to hospital. He is considered a student at FSU. His mother was assigned to the Sheriff’s Office to protect local public schools.
Police did not immediately release the victim’s name. Six of them had been treated in hospital for their wounds. Authorities said at a press conference Thursday afternoon that the two murdered were not attending school as students.
Leon County Sheriff Walter McNeill said that although he did not motivate the shooting, he was a member of the agency’s Youth Advisory Committee, his department knew the shooters well.
“He was a steeper-graded family in the Leon County Sheriff’s family and worked in many of the training programs we have, so it’s no surprise that he has access to weapons,” McNeill said.
The attack, rattling students and sending scramblings to the university’s Tallahassee campus, took place around noon. Police flocked to campus with guns depicting guns in response to reports of shootings near the Student Union. Students hid in classrooms and libraries.
![Dozens of patrol vehicles, including the forensic van, are stationed outside the Florida State University Student Union building after filming Thursday in Tallahassee.](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 620 413"/%3E "Dozens of patrol vehicles, including the forensic van, are stationed outside the Florida State University Student Union building after filming Thursday in Tallahassee.")
Recorded from behind the bushes and shared by FSU students with the Miami Herald, the video showed people calmly strolling on the sidewalk and taking at least three shots as they ran and screamed.
Near the shooting location, laptops, towels, backpacks and water bottles were scattered across the grassy area, abandoned in a moment of panic.
“Everyone was running,” said Raiden Paniagua, a 19-year-old freshman. “I was very scared.”
By 3:17pm, Tallahassee Police said they had secured the campus but continued to treat the student union and surrounding area as crime scenes. A spokesman for Memorial Healthcare in Tallahassee said six people were being treated at the hospital.
News of the shooting echoed at the Capitol in Florida, which was temporarily locked down and reached Washington.
“It’s scary to see something like this happen,” President Donald Trump told reporters on Thursday from his oval office.
While he called the shooting “shame,” Trump suggested not defending new gun laws, saying, “guns don’t shoot, people do.”
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Trump called himself a “big advocate” of the second amendment and right to arms.
“We have an obligation to protect the Second Amendment,” he said.
“Everyone is angry”
Reports of the shooting on campus first appeared at 12:02pm on the school’s emergency alert system.
“We continue to search for shelters and await further instructions,” the university told students. “Be prepared to stay away from all doors and windows and take additional protection.”
On campus, FSU student Victor Alonso, 19, was in government class in the HCB classroom building next to the Student Union when the phone lit up with an alert.
He read the message: an active shooter was on campus. “There’s no way,” he thought.
After a while, panic broke out in his classroom. Alonso and the other students scrambled to barricade the doors. He heard the gunshot and then a helicopter was circling over his head.
The officer quickly arrived at the door and cried out. “They raised our hands and went down the hall,” Alonso told the Times/Herald in an interview from his dorm room.
He said law enforcement continues to move them all across campus. “They ultimately made us difficult to avoid four or five in different buildings,” he said.
At one point he had taken shelter to what he described as an AC repair unit and later leaned back in the courtyard. He was finally allowed to return to the dorm about two hours after the initial warning.
“Everyone is mad,” Alonso said. “I just don’t know how this will happen. I hate that.”
Raleen McDaniel, 26, was in a classroom watching a video about Korean history when he heard a gunshot.
“I thought it was a video at first, but I realized it was a real shot,” McDaniel said in an interview with the Times/Herald.
McDaniel recalls seeing students running down the hallway and descending to the floor. Her classroom was located near the Student Union.
“People go there to study,” she said. Her friend comforted her, making her visibly distraught. It had been about two hours since the shooting was reported and what happened was still sinking.
“We knew that shooting was possible because it was so common, but we didn’t expect it to happen to us,” she said.
Local and state police were also rushed to the scene, not just agents at the FBI’s Jacksonville office.
A video posted on social media shortly after the shooting was first reported showed a student walking with his hands raised and running with a gun drawn. The video then showed police quietly instructing students about where they could and could not go to campus.
The shooting prompted officers to search the campus, clear the room and use the term “seminole” to let students know they were safe in hiding. Tallahassee police told students to contact their families. They were provided with rides at the Donald L. Tucker Civic Center, which was established as a family unification centre.
Classes were cancelled for the remainder of the week and all home athletic events were cancelled until Sunday.
In a video posted to X, Gov. Ron Desantis said he and first lady Casey Desantis “stalking in solidarity and praying for the entire Florida community.”
“We are grieving two individuals who lost their lives in this tragic attack and we very much hope for those who are currently recovering in hospitals,” he said. “This murderer must be brought to trial to the fullest extent of the law.”
Details released by the police
The handgun used during the shooting was Ichner’s mother’s previous service weapon, and he was allowed to buy the weapon for her personal use, police said. The 20-year-old also had a shotgun, police confirmed.
“No one has confirmed that he was shot with a shotgun, but that could change,” said FSU Police Chief Jason Trambower. At this point in the investigation, Trambower said he did not believe the shotgun was used.
McNeill added that the sheriff’s aide has not been stopped, but there is a thorough investigation into the matter.
Earlier on Thursday, the House Education and Employment Committee passed a bill aimed at improving school safety. During discussions on the bill, D-Parkland Rep. Christine Hunschofsky mentioned the shooting at FSU, saying he heard from several members of the community who are still caught up in the 2018 shooting of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High.
“This is heartbreak, sadness and trauma, a loss that will stay forever for the people,” Hunshovsky said.
Before adjoining the committee, its chairman, Rep. Jennifer Canady, R. Lakeland, called for a moment of silence from those affected by FSU.
It was not the first time an FSU student had to escape a shooting on college campus.
In 2014, three were shot by gunmen by the university’s Strozier Library. The students were in the 24-hour library where gunmen were studying for their final exams when they fired around midnight.
All students survived, but one – Ronnie Ahmed remained paralyzed.
Miami Herald editors David Smiley and Times staff writers Jeffrey S. Solochek and Romy Ellenbogen contributed to the report, including information from the Associated Press.
