TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — (AP) — Two people were killed and six others were injured when a gunman opened fire at Florida State University, sending students fleeing from the student union and putting the Tallahassee, Florida, campus under lockdown.
Authorities have identified the shooter as Phoenix Ikner, a 20-year-old Florida State student who is the stepson of a sheriff’s deputy. He began firing with his stepmother’s former service weapon before he was shot and wounded by officers when he refused to comply with commands, investigators said.
Authorities have not yet revealed a motive for the shooting, which began around lunchtime Thursday just outside the student union.
Officials have also not identified the victims who died. A family member said that university employee Robert Morales was one of those who were killed. Attorneys for the family of the second victim identified him as Tiru Chabba, a food service vendor executive. Here is what we know about Morales and Chabba.
Robert Morales was a university dining coordinator who had worked at Florida State since 2015, according to his LinkedIn profile.
“Today we lost my younger Brother, he was one of the victims killed at FSU,” Ricardo Morales Jr. posted on social media late Thursday. “He loved his job at FSU and his beautiful Wife and Daughter. I’m glad you were in my life.”
Morales had studied criminology at the school in the early 1990s, according to the LinkedIn profile.
The profile also said he was CEO of Black Bean Food Group, though state records show that the business was dissolved a decade ago.
Morales developed innovative menus, especially Cuban food, and was a former assistant football coach at nearby Leon High School, Kyle Clark, a senior vice president at FSU, said Friday afternoon at a vigil.
“He didn’t just do a job. He lived the job,” Clark said. “He was a stellar person."
The Morales brothers' father, Ricardo Morales, was a Cuban exile turned CIA operative in South Florida with the nickname “Monkey.” Ricardo Morales Jr. describes his father's work as a contract agent for the CIA in the forthcoming book, “Monkey Morales: The True Story of a Mythic Cuban Exile, Assassin, CIA Operative, FBI Informant, Smuggler, and Dad,” which is expected to be published later this year.
“Dubbed ‘The Monkey’ for his disruptive and unpredictable escapades, Morales grabbed headlines for decades as tales of his bombings, arrests, assassination attempts (both those he executed and those he suffered), and testimony constructed a real-life spy adventure unlike anything brought to page or screen,” reads promotional material from publisher Simon & Schuster.
The elder Morales was fatally shot in a bar brawl in 1982 at the age of 43.
Tiru Chabba was working for food service vendor Aramark when he was killed on the Florida State campus, said Michael Wukela, a spokesperson for attorneys hired by the family.
A LinkedIn profile listed Chabba as a regional vice president of Aramark Collegiate Hospitality who had worked for the company for more than two decades. The 45-year-old Greenville, South Carolina, resident was a married father of two children who had earned an MBA from The Citadel in South Carolina.
"Tiru Chabba’s family is going through the unimaginable now,” Bakari Sellers, one of the attorneys hired by the family, said in a statement. “Instead of hiding Easter eggs and visiting with friends and family, they’re living a nightmare where this loving father and devoted husband was stolen from them in an act of senseless and preventable violence.”
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This story clarifies that the alleged shooter is the stepson of a sheriff's deputy.
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