Florida State shooting suspect was at center of years-long custody battle, documents show
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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — In 2020, Christian Gunnar Eriksen went before a judge in his Navy Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps uniform, and testified that he wanted his name legally changed to Phoenix Ikner.
The 10th-grade honor roll student at Lincoln High School in Tallahassee cited a “tragic event” in 2015 — when arrest records show his mother, Anne-Mari Eriksen, was arrested at the Fort Lauderdale airport and accused of kidnapping him and taking him to Norway.
“He chose the name Phoenix,” a Leon County court document states, “because of its representation of rising from the ashes anew.”
On Thursday, police say Ikner walked onto Florida State University’s campus with a handgun and opened fire just before noon — wounding at least six people, and killing two. His motivation remains unknown.
Documents obtained by the Miami Herald shed light on the life of the mass-shooting suspect — who was at the center of a years-long custody battle between his parents dating back to 2007. Documents filed in Leon County Circuit Court by Ikner and his father allege he was physically abused by his mother in 2015, and show that Florida’s Department of Children and Families had an ongoing investigation.
The two people who died were not students at the university, but the shooter is believed to be a student, Florida State University Police Chief Jason Trumbower said.
Ikner grew up in Tallahassee and after 2015 lived primarily with his father, Christopher Ikner, and stepmother Jessica Ikner, a Leon County Sheriff’s deputy whose gun police say Phoenix Ikner used in the attack. His father wed Jessica Ikner in 2010.
Court records show years of back-and-forth correspondence between his parents, and ongoing medical appointments. A probable cause affidavit in April 2015, a month after his mother brought him to Norway, stated that Ikner was on medication for “several health and mental issues,” including a growth hormone disorder and ADHD.
A petition for injunction signed in 2015 by Ikner and his father describes Eriksen scratching Ikner on the knee, and notes that his paternal grandmother took photos. It also describes a March 13, 2015, incident in which Ikner confided in a friend, his father and his stepmother that Eriksen punched him in the chest and back, but the father found “no marks visible.”
“Christian called us on the cell phone and told us he was being abused,” reads the testimony.
Eriksen couldn’t be immediately reached for comment. In a civil lawsuit alleging slander and libel, she said Christopher and Jessica Ikner were making false allegations against her and harassing her. The lawsuit was dismissed.
Butte County authorities have identified the gunman, now dead, who staged an attack Wednesday on an elementary school that left two kindergartners critically wounded.
On a Facebook account that appears to belong to Eriksen, she wrote “Love being my son Christian Gunnar (Phoenix) mother,” on May 14, 2023.
According to court documents, Phoenix Ikner decided that he “wanted a fresh start on his life,” and to change his name. During a hearing, ”the court found him to be a mentally, emotionally, and physically mature young adult,” a report states. At some point, he got involved in the Leon County Sheriff’s office: attending the office’s training programs and joining the Youth Advisory Council.
Leon County Sheriff Walter A. McNeil said at a news conference on FSU’s campus following the shooting that it was “tragic in more ways than you people in the audience could ever [fathom].”
“He has been steeped in the Leon County Sheriff’s Office family, engaged in a number of training programs that we have,” McNeil said.
One of his elementary school teachers, who remembers him from 2015 as Christian Eriksen, said that he was “quiet and polite.” She said she was “shocked” to learn about the shooting.
“Christian was super sweet, quiet,” said the teacher, who asked not to be identified by name. “It’s really sad that children’s life experiences and access to guns can lead to tragedies like this.”
Healy and Ceballos write for the Miami Herald.
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