Police have identified the gunman as a deputy in the attack by a local sheriff’s deputy who has also injured five people.
The 20-year-old son of the sheriff’s aide fired at Florida State University with his mother’s former service weapon, killing two people and injuring at least six people, investigators said.
Friday’s attack occurred outside the Tallahassee School Student Union at 11:50am ET (15:50 GMT).
The university has issued active shooter game alerts quickly, and Florida’s alert system announced that law enforcement has quickly “neutralized the threat.”
Florida State University police chief Jason Trambower said the two murdered, who were not immediately identified, were not students at the school.
Five other people were being treated at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital. There, the attackers were also undergoing treatment after being detained, he said.
From the oval office, US President Donald Trump said he was “fully explained.”
“That’s scary. It’s scary when something like this happens,” Trump said.
He quickly expressed his support for gun ownership, saying, “These things are terrible, but guns don’t fire. People do.”
Leon County Sheriff Walter McNeill later identified the suspect as 20-year-old Phoenix Eckner, the son of a sheriff’s aide within his own department.
He added that Ichner used his mother’s previous service weapons in the attack, and that the attacker was a longtime member of the Sheriff’s Office Youth Advisory Committee and was engaged in many training programs with the office.
“We’re going to do everything we can and send people a message that this is never tolerated here in Leon County, and I’m saying it all across the state and across this country,” McNeill said.
Police said Ichner is believed to be a university student, but the motive for the attack was not immediately known. Ichner called for the right to be silent when he was arrested, authorities said.
School shootings are relatively common in the US, and Thursday’s shooting wasn’t the first university attack.
In 2014, the three were shot just outside and inside the entrance to the Strozier Library, in the middle of the university’s campus.
The officer, who arrived within two minutes of the first call shot, killed a 31-year-old man, a gunman.
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