April 18 (UPI) -- All six people injured during a mass shooting at Florida State University are expected to make a full recovery, the hospital said Friday.
The two people killed Thursday were not students and have only been identified by family members involved with dining operations.
"They were all very very brave," Dr. Brett Howard, a general surgeon with Tallahassee Memorial Hospital, said about the victims. "There's the moment of shock ... but they were all able to talk to us."
Phoenix Ikner, the 20-year-old Florida State student accused of the shooting at the state university in Tallahassee, was wounded during a gunfire exchange with law enforcement and remains hospitalized.
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Howard, who declined to say whether Iklner was at the hospital, appeared with about a dozen colleagues.
The doctor said all of the victims were in surgery or stabilized within an hour of their arrival at the trauma center, which is close to the shooting a little before noon.
Five were treated for gunshot wounds to their "extremities," the chest and the abdomen, and one was hurt fleeing the scene but not hit by gunfire.
Three of the patients were to be discharged Friday and the conditions of the others are stable.
FSU graduate student Madison Askins, 23, from her hospital bed recounted being shot
"The minute I got shot, I remember my parents telling me I just need to play dead," Askins told CBS News. "So I released all the muscles in my body, I closed my eyes, I held my breath. I did everything I could to look like I was dead because I didn't want him to shoot me again. God forbid."
Dining worker, vendor killed
Family members identified Robert Moralesna long-time university dining worker, and Tiru Chabba, a regional vice president at Aramark Collegiate Hospitality in South Carolina.
The shooting was near the Student Union, where meals are served.
"Today we lost my younger brother," Ricardo Morales Jr. posted X on Thursday night. "He was one of the victims killed at FSU. He loved his job at FSU and his beautiful wife and daughter. I'm glad you were in my life."
Robert Morales was attending a meeting with other university employees at the time of the shooting, the Miami Herald reported.
He was an assistant football coach at Leon High School, where he served "with dedication, integrity, and a true passion for mentoring young athletes," the athletic department said.
The victim is the son of Ricardo "Monkey" Morales, a Cuban American CIA operative and anti-Castro militant active during the Cold War. He was killed in a bar fight in Miami in 1982.
During a 2021 radio interview in Miami, Ricardo Morales Jr. claimed that his father had ties to Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy.
Chabba was a father of two and a husband.
"Tiru Chabba's family is going through the unimaginable now," attorney Bakari Sellers 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."
"We ask you to keep his family in your thoughts and prayers as we fight to ensure they see justice that honors the memories of Mr. Chabba and all the victims of Thursday's shooting."
School in mourning
There is a growing memorial outside the Student Union, where people fled during the gunfire. Backpacks, glasses and notebooks were abandoned.
The Student Union and other buildings remain closed as law enforcement processed evidence from the crime scenes.
The university canceled classes Thursday and Friday, and activities through the weekend.
At 5 p.m., a vigil that included a moment of silence took place at Langford Green, a grassy area on the campus. It is in front of Doak Campbell Stadium near the Unconquered Statue, which represents persistence, pride and glory, according to the school's website.
"This is the kind of trauma that changes people and changes a place, but it does not define us," FSU President Richard McCullough said at the vigil, which drew thousands.
"What defines us is how we respond. And in the moment, Florida State University and the entire region responded."
Eleven years ago there was a shooting at Strozier Library in which two people were injured.
Those with video, audio or other information related to the incident, can send them to an FBI site.
The accused shooter
Phoenix Ikner is the stepson of a Leon County Sheriff's Office deputy, Jessica Ikner. The 18-year deputy was a school resource officer and "her service to this community has been exceptional," Leon County Sheriff Walt McNeil said during a news conference Thursday.
"Unfortunately, her son had access to one of her weapons, and that was one of the weapons found at the scene. We are continuing our investigation as to how that weapon was used and what other weapons perhaps he may have had access to," McNeil said.
Phoenix Ikner was a member of the 2021-22 Leon County Sheriff's Office Youth Advisory Council as a high school junior.
Ikner transferred this spring semester from Tallahassee State College to nearby FSU, where he was a political science major.
Ikner was involved in an extracurricular political club a few years ago. Reid Seybold, an FSU student, told CNN he was asked to leave the group.
"He had continually made enough people uncomfortable where certain people had stopped coming. That's kind of when we reached the breaking point with Phoenix, and we asked him to leave," Seybold said.
Ikner, a registered Republican, attended a rally against Donald Trump on Jan. 17, three days before he became president again.
"These people are usually pretty entertaining, usually not for good reasons," Ikner told the student newspaper, FSU News, at the time. "I think it's a little too late, he's [Trump] already going to be inaugurated on Jan. 20 and there's not really much you can do unless you outright revolt, and I don't think anyone wants that."
In 2020, the suspect changed his name from Christian Gunnar Eriksen. He was a dual U.S.-Norwergian citizen like his biological mother.
Ikner was involved in a custody battle.
In 2015, he was taken by his biological mother to Norway in violation of a child custody order. Anne-Mari Eriksen was accused of telling his father, Christopher Ikner, that she was taking him to South Florida for spring break.
The child was on medication for "several health and mental issues, to include a growth hormone disorder and ADHD," according to the affidavit.
He was brought back to the United States with his mother, who was arrested at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in July 2015. She later pleaded no contest to illegally removing a child from Florida.
In October 2015, Anne-Mari Eriksen sued the father, stepmother and two other relatives for slander and libel on behalf of herself and her son.
"The emotional and psychological harm done to the minor child will be evident for years, and will require counseling, and given the child being the age of 11, will have memory impacted by the behaviors of all the defendants for the false claims done on his mother, and for the parental alienation of the close relationship of the minor child," the lawsuit claimed.
A judge dismissed the lawsuit seven months later.
