FSU shooting latest: Police search for motive in campus attack that killed 2, injured 6
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(TALLAHASSEE, Fla.) — The Florida State University community is reeling and police are searching for a motive after a gunman opened fire on the Tallahassee campus on Thursday, killing two and injuring six.
When the suspect, 20-year-old FSU student Phoenix Ikner, was confronted by responders, he didn’t comply with commands and was shot by officers, authorities said. He’s expected to survive, Tallahassee police said.
Police have not identified the two people killed but said they were not students.
Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare said two of the six injured victims are expected to be discharged on Friday. Three patients have improved and are in good condition, while one victim remains in fair condition, the hospital said Friday.
McKenzie Heeter, a 20-year-old junior, told ABC News she was just feet away from the gunman when he shot a woman wearing scrubs by the student union.
The shooter was “waving around a bigger rifle … and then he pulled out the handgun and shot that woman,” Heeter said.
“Her back was to him, she was just walking. I don’t even think she registered what happened,” she said. “That’s what I just keep thinking about.”
Heeter described sprinting across campus in sheer panic.
“I did a four-minute mile in sandals. I’ve never run that fast in my life,” she said. “I felt like I have got to leave, or else it could be me next.”
Officials revealed that the suspect’s stepmother, Jessica Ikner, is a current deputy with the local Leon County Sheriff’s Office. While authorities identified Jessica Ikner as the suspect’s mother, court documents indicate she is his stepmother.
Phoenix Ikner had access to one of his stepmother’s personal weapons, which was one of the weapons found at the scene, Sheriff Walter McNeil said.
The suspect was also a “long-standing member” of the Leon County Sheriff’s Office’s Youth Advisory Council, McNeil said.
He was “engaged in a number of training programs that we have,” the sheriff said, adding, “Not a surprise to us that he had access to weapons.”
In a statement to the Florida State University community, President Richard McCullough called the shooting a “tragic and senseless act of violence.”
FSU has canceled classes and sporting events through the weekend. A vigil is set for Friday at 5 p.m.
President Donald Trump said Thursday he has an “obligation to protect” the Second Amendment when asked by a reporter in the Oval Office if he sees anything “broken” with America’s current gun laws.
“Look, I’m a big advocate of the Second Amendment. I have been from the beginning. I protected it, and these things are terrible, but the gun doesn’t do the shooting. The people do. It’s a phrase that’s used probably too often,” Trump said.
“I will tell you that it’s a shame,” he said of the shooting.
ABC News’ Faith Abubey and Fritz Farrow contributed to this report.
Members of the Chicago White Sox grounds crew struggle to deploy the rain tarp in the bottom of the seventh inning as hail and rain delay a game against the Los Angeles Angels at Rate Field on March 30, 2025 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Matt Dirksen/Getty Images)
(CHICAGO) — Hundreds of thousands of customers were without power across the Midwest on Monday after deadly, severe weather battered the region on Sunday.
More than 310,000 customers are without power in Michigan Monday morning. Another 55,000 are without power in Wisconsin and 48,000 are in the dark in Indiana.
The National Weather Service said it recorded more than 200 wind damage reports and at least four tornadoes were reported across Michigan, Missouri, Tennessee and Kentucky.
Five fatalities have been attributed to the storm.
Three children — a 2-year-old girl, her 4-year-old brother and their 11-year-old cousin — were killed when the car they were in was hit by a tree in Michigan, the Kalamazoo County Sheriff’s Office said. Weather appeared to be the main contributing factor, the sheriff’s office said.
In Valparaiso, Indiana, one person was killed when “severe crosswinds” blew a tractor and a trailer onto their sides, according to local authorities.
The National Weather Service said a second person was killed north of Millersburg, Indiana, when wind from a thunderstorm blew over an Amish buggy.
The severe weather threat continues Monday, with both tornado and severe thunderstorm watches in effect across multiple states in the South.
Some storms could bring hailstones the size of tennis balls and damaging winds of up to 60 mph.
The storms are expected to reach New Orleans and Atlanta in the morning. The severe weather will hit Jacksonville, Florida; Charleston, South Carolina; and Charlotte, North Carolina, by the afternoon.
The Southeast region is where the strongest of the storms are expected, with damaging wind, large hail and tornadoes possible.
Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and New York could see storms by the evening rush hour.
ABC News’ Darren Reynolds and Jessica Gorman contributed to this report.
(CHANDLER, AZ) — Lori Daybell, the mother convicted of murdering two of her children in a so-called doomsday plot, is now on trial in Arizona on allegations she conspired to also kill her fourth husband.
Opening statements are scheduled to start Monday in Maricopa County in the 51-year-old’s latest trial. She is representing herself and has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder.
The trial is scheduled through mid-May.
She was indicted by a Maricopa County grand jury in 2021 in connection with the killing of her estranged husband, Charles Vallow, who was fatally shot by her brother in July 2019 during a confrontation at her home in Chandler, Arizona.
Her brother, Alex Cox, told police he shot his brother-in-law in self-defense. Police were investigating the claims when Cox himself died from natural causes months later.
Dubbed the “doomsday mom,” Lori Daybell is currently serving life in prison without parole after a jury found her guilty of two counts of first-degree murder for the 2019 deaths of her children, Joshua “J.J.” Vallow, 7, and Tylee Ryan, 16.
J.J. and Tylee were last seen in September 2019 and, following a monthslong search, their remains were found on an Idaho property belonging to Lori Daybell’s fifth husband, Chad Daybell, in June 2020.
She was also found guilty of conspiring to kill her children and her husband’s first wife, Tamara Daybell, in the high-profile case.
She and Chad Daybell, the author of religious fiction books, both reportedly adhered to a doomsday ideology. She once claimed she was “a god assigned to carry out the work of the 144,000 at Christ’s second coming in July 2020” and didn’t want anything to do with her family “because she had a more important mission to carry out,” according to court documents obtained by ABC News.
Friends have said Lori Vallow’s 13-year marriage to Charles Vallow started to deteriorate after she became a fan of Daybell’s books, with the two separating in 2019. Their blended family had included Tylee from Lori Daybell’s third marriage, and Charles Vallow’s nephew J.J., whom they adopted.
Lori Daybell has denied murdering her children, saying in court at her sentencing in July 2023: “Jesus Christ knows the truth of what happened here. … No one was murdered in this case. Accidental deaths happen. Suicides happen. Fatal side effects from medications happen.”
Chad Daybell was also convicted of murdering the two children, as well as his first wife, in a separate trial in last year. He was sentenced to death and now awaits execution on Idaho’s death row.
In Arizona, Lori Daybell is additionally accused of scheming with her brother to kill Brandon Boudreaux, the ex-husband of her niece.
She will stand trial for premediated murder in that case in Maricopa County following the murder trial. She has pleaded not guilty.
(WASHINGTON) — A federal appeals court is hearing arguments Monday over the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act last week to deport more than 200 alleged members of a Venezuelan gang to El Salvador with no due process.
The hearing comes hours after a federal judge ruled that the migrants deserved to have a court hearing before their deportations to determine whether they belonged to the Tren de Aragua gang.
In a ruling denying the Trump administration’s request to dissolve his order blocking the deportations, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg wrote that Trump’s “unprecedented use” of the Alien Enemies Act does not remove the government’s responsibility to ensure the men removed could contest their designation as alleged gang members.
Trump last week invoked the Alien Enemies Act — a wartime authority used to deport noncitizens with little-to-no due process — by arguing that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is a “hybrid criminal state” that is invading the United States. Boasberg temporarily blocked the president’s use of the law to deport more than 200 alleged gang members to El Salvador, calling the removals “awfully frightening” and “incredibly troublesome.”
An official with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement subsequently acknowledged in a sworn declaration that “many” of the noncitizens deported last week under the Alien Enemies Act did not have criminal records in the United States.
“The Court need not resolve the thorny question of whether the judiciary has the authority to assess this claim in the first place. That is because Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on another equally fundamental theory: before they may be deported, they are entitled to individualized hearings to determine whether the Act applies to them at all,” Judge Boasberg wrote in his ruling Monday, adding the men were likely to win their case.
Judge Boasberg acknowledged that the use of the Alien Enemies Act “implicates a host of complicated legal issues” but sidestepped the larger question of whether the law was properly invoked, instead focusing on the due process deserved by the men. He added that the men have been irreparably harmed by their removal to an El Salvadoran prison where they face “torture, beatings, and even death.”
“Federal courts are equipped to adjudicate that question when individuals threatened with detention and removal challenge their designation as such. Because the named Plaintiffs dispute that they are members of Tren de Aragua, they may not be deported until a court has been able to decide the merits of their challenge,” he wrote.
Judge Boasberg also cast doubt on the Trump administration’s allegation that the decision risks national security, noting that the men would still be detained within the United States if they had not been deported.
During a court hearing on Friday, DOJ lawyers acknowledged that the men deported on the Alien Enemies Act have the right to a habeas hearing — where they could contest their alleged membership in Tren de Aragua — but declined to vow that each man would be given a hearing before they were removed from the country.
A three-judge appeals panel is hearing arguments Monday over the Trump administration’s request to overturn Judge Boasberg’s ruling blocking the deportations.
If the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals overturns Boasberg’s blocking of the president’s use of the centuries-old wartime law, the Trump administration could exercise the authority to deport any suspected migrant gang member with little-to-no due process.
Lawyers representing the Venezuelan men targeted under Trump’s proclamation have argued that the president exceeded his authority by using the Alien Enemies Act against a gang — rather than a state actor — outside of wartime.
“The President is trying to write Congress’s limits out of the act,” the plaintiffs argued, adding that U.S. presidents have used the law three other times during or immediately preceding a war.
But the Trump administration has argued that the judiciary does not have the right to review the use of the Alien Enemies Act, alleging the deportations fall under the president’s Article II powers to remove alleged terrorists and execute the country’s foreign policy.
“The President’s action is lawful and based upon a long history of using war authorities against organizations connected to foreign states and national security judgments, which are not subject to judicial second guessing,” DOJ lawyers have argued in court filings.
The Trump administration is asking the appeals court to overturn Boasberg’s temporary restraining order blocking the deportations, while Judge Boasberg continues to examine whether the Trump administration deliberately defied his order by sending the men to an El Salvadoran prison rather than returning them to the United States as he directed.
“The government’s not being terribly cooperative at this point, but I will get to the bottom of whether they violated my order and who ordered this and what’s the consequence,” Boasberg said on Friday.
With deportations under the Alien Enemies Act temporarily blocked, the Trump administration has vowed to use other authorities to deport noncitizens. Over the weekend, Venezuelan National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez announced that the country had reached an agreement to resume repatriation flights of Venezuelan migrants from the U.S.
“We’re going to keep targeting the worst of the worst, which we’ve been doing since day one, and deporting from the United States through the various laws on the books,” border czar Tom Homan told ABC’s Jon Karl on Sunday.
The three-person panel hearing today’s arguments includes two judges nominated by Republican presidents, including one nominated by Trump himself. The D.C. Circuit is the last stop before the Trump administration could take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, where Trump nominated three judges during his last term, solidifying the court’s conservative majority.
