Students who already survived one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history were among those hiding from an active shooter at Florida State University.
Gunfire broke out on the FSU campus shortly after noon on Thursday, in the area of the student union. Police said two people, neither of them students, were killed and six others were wounded in the attack, which came just over seven years after the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.
On Feb. 14, 2018, gunman Nikolas Cruz burst into the building with an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle and unleashed 140 rounds of gunfire inside the school where he was once a student. He killed a total of three staff members and 14 students during his seven-minute rampage. Another 17 people were injured in the mass shooting.
“America is broken. My daughter Jaime was murdered in the Parkland school shooting. Many of her friends who were lucky enough to survive that shooting went on to attend FSU,” father Fred Guttenberg wrote on X shortly after gunfire broke out at FSU’s Tallahassee campus.
“Incredibly, some of them were just a part of their 2nd school shooting and some were in the student union today. As a father, all I ever wanted after the Parkland shooting was to help our children be safe.”
Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo/Getty Images
A student honors the deceased near the scene of a shooting at the Florida State University student center on April 18 in Tallahassee, Florida. (Photo by Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo/Getty Images)
Josh Gallagher was among those forced to duck for cover in the halls of his high school back in 2018. He said he and his friends were stranded for four minutes listening to “screams of classmates and gunshots” as they tried to escape the danger. Now a law student at FSU, Gallagher’s life was once again touched by gun violence on Thursday.
“After living through the MSD shooting in 2018, I never thought it would hit close to home again,” he wrote on X. “Then I’m in the FSU Law Library and hear on alarm: active shooter on campus. No matter your politics, we need to meet—and something has to change. Prayers to the victims and families.”
In wake of the violence at FSU, police identified the shooter as university student Phoenix Ikner, the 20-year-old son of a sheriff’s deputy and school resource officer. His mother, Jessica Ikner, has also been with the sheriff’s office in Leon County, where Florida State is located, for 18 years.
