Amid the abandoned chemistry notes and other debris left behind after a deadly shooting at Florida State University are lingering questions about how the stepson of a beloved sheriff’s deputy tasked with school safety at a middle school became the accused gunman.

Political science student Phoenix Ikner was a long-standing member of a sheriff’s office youth advisory council and was steeped in the family-like culture of the agency. When officers rushed to the university’s student union on reports of gunfire, authorities say it was the 20-year-old who used his stepmother’s former service weapon to open fire, killing two men and wounding six others.

As people fled in terror, Ikner was shot and taken into custody. He invoked his right not to speak to investigators, and his motive remains unknown as he lies in a hospital bed.

The prosecutor’s office is weighing possible charges as stories emerge about a darker side. One classmate recalled him being kicked out of a student club over comments that other members found troubling.

“This is horrific,” Jimmy Williams, the chief of safety for Leon County Schools, said of the shooting. “This is a horrible, horrible event.”

Williams, who has known Ikner’s stepmother, Jessica Ikner, for a decade, said the allegations underscore that “none of us are immune to tragedy.”

Classes and business operations will resume Monday, Florida State announced over the weekend.

“I know it won’t feel like a normal week,” FSU President Richard McCullough said in message to students and employees Saturday. “It’s the last one before finals, and many of you are still processing what happened. Please take care of yourself.”

His stepmother, whose own alma mater is Florida State, was reassigned from her position as a school resource officer Friday and granted the personal leave she requested, a sheriff’s office spokesperson told The Associated Press.

When the alert went out of an active shooter at Florida State University, Jessica Ikner was on duty around 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) away at Raa Middle School. A sheriff’s office spokesperson said Jessica Ikner worked to secure the campus to prevent anyone from entering as Raa went into “lockout mode,” along with all of the county’s public schools. She was practiced at this work.

Last year, she was named an “employee of the month” by the sheriff’s office, where she has worked for 18 years.

Police said they believed Phoenix Ikner shot the victims using his stepmother’s former service handgun, which she had kept for personal use after the force upgraded its weapons.

Leon County Sheriff Walter McNeil described Phoenix Ikner on Thursday as having been “steeped in the Leon County Sheriff’s Office family” and engaged in a number of sheriff’s office training programs, adding that it wasn’t a surprise that he would have access to guns.

There was no record of him having a criminal record. And in Florida, training and a background check are not required to carry concealed guns in public.

When Ikner was a child, his parents were involved in several custody disputes with his biological mother, court records show.

In 2015, when he was 10, his biological mother, Anne-Mari Eriksen, said she was taking him to South Florida for spring break in 2015 but instead traveled to Norway. After returning to the U.S., she pleaded no contest to removing a minor from the state against a court order and was sentenced to 200 days in jail. She later moved to vacate her plea, but that was denied.

In the fall of that same year, Eriksen filed a civil libel-slander complaint against Jessica Ikner, along with several other family members. The complaint, which was later dismissed, accused them of harassing Eriksen and abusing Ikner’s position at the sheriff’s office.

In 2020, at age 15, the suspect received court approval to change his name from Christian Eriksen to Phoenix Ikner, court documents show. His old name was a constant reminder of a “tragedy” he suffered, in the words of administrative magistrate James Banks, who approved the request, NBC News reported.

Banks observed that Ikner was a “mentally, emotionally and physically mature young adult who is very articulate” and “very polite” and said he chose the new name as a representation of “rising from the ashes anew.”

Reid Seybold and his classmates were working on a group project in a building located a short, three-minute walk from the student union when someone ran in and warned them about the gunfire. They huddled together, the 22-year-old said, frantically firing off what they thought might be their final text messages to loved ones.

When Seybold found out who the suspect in the shooting was — that it was someone he knows — he was overcome with anger. Seybold was the president of a club that Phoenix Ikner joined when they were both studying at the local community college, now called Tallahassee State College.

“He would complain about Black people pretty regularly, especially when conversations of police brutality would come up,” Seybold said.

Seybold said Ikner was known for espousing racist and white supremacist views that so alienated other members that the club asked him to leave the group.

“He made people that uncomfortable,” said Seybold, who now also is studying political science at Florida State. “I personally know him to have complained about how multiculturalism and communism are ruining America.”

A key part of the investigation will likely focus on what might have led to what experts call the “pathway to violence,” said Kenneth Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services, a Cleveland-based consulting firm.

“The question is, what was the motivation, what was the grievance?,” said Trump, who wrote the book “Practical School Security: Basic Guidelines for Safe and Secure Schools.” (He’s not related to the U.S. President).

“Usually, they build up over time through some type of grievance against people,” Trump said. “The questions in the upcoming days are, were there warning signs, what were those warnings signs, and if they were there, who knew?”

Ikner transferred to Florida State after earning an associate degree at the community college, school officials said.

He didn’t attract the attention of the school paper, other than commenting in a FSU story about a rally on campus against President Donald Trump.

Ikner, a registered Republican, described the protesters as “entertaining” because Trump was already set to be inaugurated. The comments have since been removed from the story, an editor’s note saying the move was to “avoid amplifying the voice of an individual responsible for violence.”

Before Ikner’s Instagram was taken down, his bio quoted a verse from the Old Testament book of Jeremiah. “Thou art my battle ax and weapons of war: for with thee will I break in pieces the nations, and with thee will I destroy kingdoms,” reads Jeremiah 51:20, which scholars have interpreted to depict God’s judgment on Babylon. The empire is a symbol in the Bible of sinfulness and immorality.

A Tallahassee Police Department patrol car was stationed Thursday evening near the street where the family lives, blocking reporters from approaching the family’s home in a well-kept suburban neighborhood on the city’s east side.

Phone messages left for Jessica Ikner at a number listed for her on a school resource website and another phone connected to her through public records were not immediately returned Friday. And a sheriff’s office spokeswoman said she is not aware of the family putting out a statement or having a family spokesperson.

The only insight comes from the past statements. Nearly a decade ago, Jessica Ikner wrote a story posted on the Tallahassee Family Magazine website about children’s safety while surfing the internet, including tips to strengthen family bonds.

“Build a trusting relationship with your child,” she wrote. “Let them know that if they do make a mistake they can still come to you about anything.”

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Republished with permission of The Associated Press.

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The Waldos saved postmarked letters and other artifacts from the 1970s referencing “420,” which they now keep in a bank vault, and when the Oxford English Dictionary added the term in 2017, it cited some of those documents as the earliest recorded uses.

A brother of one of the Waldos was a close friend of Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh, as Lesh once confirmed in an interview with the Huffington Post, now HuffPost. The Waldos began hanging out in the band’s circle, and the slang term spread.

Fast-forward to the early 1990s: Steve Bloom, a reporter for the cannabis magazine High Times, was at a Dead show when he was handed a flyer urging people to “meet at 4:20 on 4/20 for 420-ing in Marin County at the Bolinas Ridge sunset spot on Mt. Tamalpais.” High Times published it.

“It’s a phenomenon,” one of the Waldos, Steve Capper, now 69, once told The Associated Press. “Most things die within a couple years, but this just goes on and on. It’s not like someday somebody’s going to say, ‘OK, Cannabis New Year’s is on June 23rd now.’”

While the Waldos came up with the term, the people who made the flier that was distributed at the Dead show — effectively turning 4/20 into a holiday — remain unknown.

In New York City, the cannabis brand Tokin’ Jew is advertising a kosher-style THC gummy line, “Tokin’ Chews,” designed to meet dietary restrictions for Passover.

Davis said he expected 300 people to partake in the West Hollywood Easter nug scavenger hunt this weekend, aided by a mobile app leading them through participating dispensaries, trivia challenges and “stoner activities.” There is a $500 cash prize.

In Portland, Bar Carlo is hosting the “blaze and praise” drag brunch. Cannabis consumption isn’t allowed onsite — “Please blaze before you arrive or go for a walk in the neighborhood in between performances,” the event listing reads — but there will be a door-prize gift basket from a local dispensary.

Bar owner Melinda Archuleta said the brunch is a dry run for hosting Pride month events in June. She herself doesn’t care much for marijuana, but as a Mexican American who has been influenced by Catholicism, she is interested in seeing the two cultures melded “in a cheeky way.”

“I’m really looking forward to seeing how the queens do it,” Archuleta said. “We’ve obviously given them carte blanche to do whatever they want — it’s 21 and up — so it doesn’t matter if it’s sacrilegious or borderline offensive.”

There are bigger celebrations, too, including the Mile High 420 Festival in Denver and one put on by SweetWater Brewing in Atlanta. Hippie Hill in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park historically has attracted massive crowds, but the gathering was canceled for a second straight year, with organizers citing a lack of financial sponsorship and city budget cuts.

Just north of the Bay Area, Lagunitas Brewing in Petaluma, California, releases its “Waldos’ Special Ale” every year on 4/20 in partnership with the term’s coiners.

4/20 also has become a big industry event, with vendors gathering to try each other’s wares.

There are 24 states that allow recreational marijuana and 14 others allowing it for medical purposes. But the movement recently has suffered some setbacks, with voters in Florida, North Dakota and South Dakota deciding not to adopt legalization measures last November.

Several states also have cracked down on intoxicating products derived from hemp, which have been widely sold even in prohibition states thanks to a loophole in the federal Farm Bill.

Marijuana remains illegal under federal law. As a candidate, President Donald Trump said he would vote for Florida’s amendment and signaled support for reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous drug, a process started by the Biden administration.

But his administration has not indicated cannabis policy is a priority. A fact sheet released by the White House last month complained that marijuana decriminalization in Washington, D.C., was an example of “failed policies” that “opened the door to disorder.”

A bipartisan group of senators last week reintroduced legislation that would ensure states can adopt their own cannabis policies and remove certain financial hurdles for the industry, such as letting entities deduct business expenses on their taxes.

Charles Alovisetti, a lawyer with the cannabis industry law firm Vicente LLP, said he hopes the administration will push forward with marijuana reform at the federal level, saying “it does align with some of their policy objectives — namely reducing criminal activity, or cartel activity.”

He also encouraged advocates to keep pushing, noting some measures such as improving banking access for marijuana businesses might pass as part of larger legislative packages.

“You continue speaking up, even if the political momentum isn’t there,” Alovisetti said. “It’s only possible if you stay in everyone’s ear.”

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Republished with permission of The Associated Press.