TALLAHASSEE—The six wounded in the Florida State University shooting, including the gunman, are all expected to survive after wounds to the torso, extremities, and face, surgeons announced Friday afternoon.
Nine surgeons and one doctor of emergency medicine hosted a 20-minute press conference from Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare’s auditorium, floors below where the five victims and assailant lay after the mass shooting that left two dead just over 24 hours earlier.
“There were gunshots to the extremities, the chest, the abdomen...All six were in stable condition on arrival, three of them did go to the operating room and are [now] out of the operating room," said Dr. Brett Howard, a general surgeon. He said that gunshot wounds were the only injuries all patients incurred, and five of the six are in stable condition.
One is in fair condition after sustaining a "serious injury." He noted that one had a facial injury, though declined to say if that patient was the one in fair condition. All are expected to make a full recovery, with two potentially leaving the hospital later today.
No blood donations are needed for any of the patients, he added.
Howard declined to release any further descriptors of the victims or their injuries.
The gunman was identified hours after the shooting as 20-year-old Phoenix Ikner, the son of a local sheriff’s deputy. He opened fire with his mother’s handgun outside the university’s Student Union, a popular study hub for the college’s tens of thousands of students, especially two weeks before final exams, at 11:56 a.m. Thursday.
He killed two non-students, one of whom was identified as 57-year-old Roberto Morales, a staff member who worked in the university’s dining division. The other has yet to be identified. Law enforcement shot Ikner at 12:00 and immediately took him into custody.
"We were very lucky," said Dr. Shelby Blank, a general surgeon also specializing in breast surgery, noting the number of students in the area could have been a "recipe for disaster."
Aside from Howard and Blank, the doctors included: Tracey Graham, Emergency Medicine, Jarrod Robertson, colorectal surgery, Joey Jarrard, general surgery, Matthew Turtzo, general surgery, George Pennington, general surgery, Melissa Amundson, oral and maxilofacial surgery, Matthew Ramseyer, general surgery, and Megan Morrow, general surgery.
