The Florida man accused of killing two people and wounding several at Florida State University was raised by "rotten bastard people," according to his maternal grandmother.
Phoenix Ikner, 20, is accused of opening fire near the FSU student union on Thursday at about 11:50 a.m. local time. The shooting killed two people and wounded several others, NBC News reported.
In an interview with the Daily Mail, Ikner's maternal grandmother, Susan Eriksen, said her side of the family had largely been cut off from Ikner during a prolonged custody battle. According to the news outlet, she told them that Ikner's biological father and his stepmother were "rotten bastard people."
"We had just found a new phone number a couple of months ago and tried to call the house and the father picked up the phone, hung up and changed the number," she told the Daily Mail.
However, Fox News reported that the custody battle had actually resulted in Ikner's maternal grandmother taking him in 2015 to Norway, in violation of a custody agreement.
NBC News reported that Ikner had been treated for mental and physical health issues as a child, according to court documents from 2015. The network also reported that Ikner used his stepmother's handgun in the shooting.
A witness told NBC News that Ikner pulled up in an orange Hummer and began firing a rifle, before reentering the vehicle and emerging with the handgun.
"I think he was shooting and he missed. So he goes back into his car and grabs a pistol, then he turns and shoots the lady in front of him. That's when I just started running," McKenzie Heeter, a junior at FSU, told NBC News.
Another FSU student, Reid Seybold, said Ikner was kicked out of political discussion group because of his extreme views.
"He espoused so much white supremacist rhetoric and far-right rhetoric, as well," Seybold told the network.
