Mass Shooting Survivor Tells NBC Suspect Was Member of Pro-Trump Group — Had ‘White Supremacist’ Views

A Florida State University mass shooting survivor told NBC’s Hallie Jackson that suspect Phoenix Ikner was a member of the pro-Trump Turning Point USA and was kicked out of a college club for “White Supremacist” views.

News broke Thursday afternoon of a mass shooting at FSU that killed two and injured five others. Ikner was taken into custody and charged with the shooting.

President Donald Trump reacted to the shooting by immediately defending guns, telling reporters “these things are terrible. But the gun doesn’t do the shooting. The people do.”

On Thursday’s edition of NBC News NOW’s Hallie Jackson NOW, a survivor of the attack named Reid Seybold told Jackson he knew the suspect, and that he was a member of the Florida chapter of Trump ally Charlie Kirk’s TPUSA.

He also said Ikner was asked to leave another campus club over his views:

HALLIE JACKSON: The shooter, suspected shooter, has been identified by police as an FSU student by the name of Phoenix Ikner. I know it’s a big school. Did you happen to know him?

REID SEYBOLD: So I actually, I spent my first two years at Tallahassee, now called Tallahassee State College, but we called it TCC. And I was the president of a political talk group we called the Political Roundtable. And he joined the club when I was at TCC.

He, we our, basically our only role was no Nazis for all, — colloquially speaking. And he espoused so much White supremacist rhetoric and far-right rhetoric as well. To the point where we had to exercise that rule.

I also know he was a member of the TCC Turning Point chapter. And since TCC, I have seen him in passing a couple of times. I was, since–.

Today, I was talking to a friend who had talked to him yesterday, or two days ago, pardon me, and he was talking about how he wasn’t ready for exams.

HALLIE JACKSON: To be clear, Reid, I just wanna make sure that folks understand this. So you were a transfer student, essentially, to FSU, right?

So you started the first two years in Tallahassee, and that is where you knew Phoenix Ikner, the suspected shooter here, and you say that he was essentially, it sounded like kicked out of a political club that you were in because of his, as you describe them, views on White supremacy?

REID SEYBOLD: Yes, ma’am. So, um, it wasn’t necessarily a formal kicking out, but he was asked not to come back and was–.

Really what had happened was we had, you know, it’s a debate back and forth, back and forth. And after enough times, I mean, he did not feel welcome because he wasn’t– he was not welcome with his with his rhetoric.

We we allow people of all you know, beliefs, creeds, whatever. And he somehow found a way to not fit the bill on everyone else.

HALLIE JACKSON: So what went through your mind, Reid, when you heard that police had identified the suspected shooter in this instance as this individual who you had known for a couple of years?

REID SEYBOLD: Initially pure unadulteed anger. To think that someone I knew had essentially made me a statistic. To think I had had conversations with him at a normal level and person-to-person.

For it to turn into this. I don’t know why he would have done something like this. I don’ know where it would have come from, but I’d sure like to find out.

Watch above via NBC News NOW’s Hallie Jackson NOW.