FSU shooting victims include a school employee whose dad was a Cuban exile turned CIA operative

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Two people were killed and six others were injured when a gunman opened fire at Florida State University, sending students fleeing from the student union and putting the Tallahassee, Florida, campus under lockdown.

Authorities have identified the shooter as Phoenix Ikner, a 20-year-old Florida State student who is the son of a sheriff’s deputy. He began firing with his mother’s former service weapon before he was shot and wounded by officers when he refused to comply with commands, investigators said.

Students wait to retrieve their personal items from the Florida State Student Union building, Tallahassee, Fla., Friday, April 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Gary McCullough)

Authorities have not yet revealed a motive for the shooting, which began around lunchtime Thursday just outside the student union.

Officials have also not identified the victims who died. A family member said that university employee Robert Morales was one of those who were killed. Attorneys for the family of the second victim identified him as Tiru Chabba, a food service vendor executive. Here is what we know about Morales and Chabba.

Robert Morales

Robert Morales was a university dining coordinator who had worked at Florida State since 2015, according to his LinkedIn profile.

“Today we lost my younger Brother, he was one of the victims killed at FSU,” Ricardo Morales Jr. posted on social media late Thursday. “He loved his job at FSU and his beautiful Wife and Daughter. I’m glad you were in my life.”

Morales had studied criminology at the school in the early 1990s, according to the LinkedIn profile.

The profile also said he was CEO of Black Bean Food Group, though state records show that the business was dissolved a decade ago.

Morales developed innovative menus, especially Cuban food, and was a former assistant football coach at nearby Leon High School, Kyle Clark, a senior vice president at FSU, said Friday afternoon at a vigil.

“He didn’t just do a job. He lived the job,” Clark said. “He was a stellar person.”

The Morales brothers’ father, Ricardo Morales, was a Cuban exile turned CIA operative in South Florida with the nickname “Monkey.” Ricardo Morales Jr. describes his father’s work as a contract agent for the CIA in the forthcoming book, “Monkey Morales: The True Story of a Mythic Cuban Exile, Assassin, CIA Operative, FBI Informant, Smuggler, and Dad,” which is expected to be published later this year.

“Dubbed ‘The Monkey’ for his disruptive and unpredictable escapades, Morales grabbed headlines for decades as tales of his bombings, arrests, assassination attempts (both those he executed and those he suffered), and testimony constructed a real-life spy adventure unlike anything brought to page or screen,” reads promotional material from publisher Simon & Schuster.

The elder Morales was fatally shot in a bar brawl in 1982 at the age of 43.

Tiru Chabba

This undated photo provided by the Strom Law Firm on Friday, April 18, 2025, shows Tiru Chaba, one of the people fatally shot on Florida State University campus. (Strom Law Firm via AP)

Tiru Chabba was working for food service vendor Aramark when he was killed on the Florida State campus, said Michael Wukela, a spokesperson for attorneys hired by the family.

A LinkedIn profile listed Chabba as a regional vice president of Aramark Collegiate Hospitality who had worked for the company for more than two decades. The 45-year-old Greenville, South Carolina, resident was a married father of two children who had earned an MBA from The Citadel in South Carolina.

“Tiru Chabba’s family is going through the unimaginable now,” Bakari Sellers, one of the attorneys hired by the family, 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.”

Judge blocks Trump administration from passport changes affecting transgender Americans

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By MICHAEL CASEY, Associated Press

BOSTON (AP) — A federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration from enacting a policy that bans the use of “X” marker used by many nonbinary people on passports as well as the changing of gender markers.

In an executive order signed in January, the president used a narrow definition of the sexes instead of a broader conception of gender. The order says a person is male or female and it rejects the idea that someone can transition from the sex assigned at birth to another gender. The framing is in line with many conservatives’ views but at odds with major medical groups and policies under former President Joe Biden.

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U.S. District Judge Julia Kobick, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, sided with the American Civil Liberties Union’s motion for a preliminary injunction, which stays the action while the lawsuit plays out.

“The Executive Order and the Passport Policy on their face classify passport applicants on the basis of sex and thus must be reviewed under intermediate judicial scrutiny,” Kobick wrote. “That standard requires the government to demonstrate that its actions are substantially related to an important governmental interest. The government has failed to meet this standard.”

The ACLU, which sued the Trump administration on behalf of five transgender Americans and two nonbinary plaintiffs, said the new policy would effectively mean transgender, nonbinary and intersex Americans could not get an accurate passport.

“We all have a right to accurate identity documents, and this policy invites harassment, discrimination, and violence against transgender Americans who can no longer obtain or renew a passport that matches who they are,” ACLU lawyer Sruti Swaminathan said.

In response to the lawsuit, the Trump administration argued the passport policy change “does not violate the equal protection guarantees of the Constitution.” They also contended that the president has broad discretion in setting passport policy and that plaintiffs would not be harmed by the policy, since they are still free to travel abroad.

Judge says detained Tufts student must be transferred from Louisiana to Vermont

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By HOLLY RAMER, Associated Press

A federal judge on Friday ordered that a Turkish Tufts University student detained by immigration authorities in Louisiana to be brought to Vermont by May 1 for a hearing over what her lawyers say was apparent retaliation for an op-ed piece she co-wrote in the student newspaper.

U.S. District Judge William Sessions said he would hear Rumeysa Ozturk’s request to be released from detention. Her lawyers had requested that she be released immediately, or at least brought back to Vermont.

The 30-year-old doctoral student was taken by immigration officials as she walked along a street in the Boston suburb of Somerville on March 25. After being taken to New Hampshire and then Vermont, she was put on a plane the next day and moved to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Basile, Louisiana. An immigration judge denied her request for bond Wednesday.

FILE – In this image taken from security camera video, Rumeysa Ozturk, a 30-year-old doctoral student at Tufts University, is detained by Department of Homeland Security agents on a street in Sommerville, Mass., March 25, 2025. (AP Photo)

Ozturk is among several people with ties to American universities whose visas were revoked or have been stopped from entering the U.S. after they were accused of attending demonstrations or publicly expressing support for Palestinians. A Louisiana immigration judge has ruled that the U.S. can deport Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil based on the federal government’s argument that he poses a national security risk.

Ozturk’s lawyers are challenging the legal authority for ICE’s detention. They asked that she be immediately released from custody, or in the alternative, be returned to Vermont while her immigration case continues.

A lawyer for the Justice Department said her case should be dismissed, saying the immigration court has jurisdiction.

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Ozturk’s lawyers first filed a petition on her behalf in Massachusetts. Initially, they didn’t know where she was. They said they were unable to speak to her until more than 24 hours after she was detained. Ozturk herself said she unsuccessfully made multiple requests to speak to a lawyer.

Ozturk was one of four students who wrote an op-ed in the campus newspaper, The Tufts Daily, last year criticizing the university’s response to student activists demanding that Tufts “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide,” disclose its investments and divest from companies with ties to Israel.

Ozturk’s lawyers say her detention violates her constitutional rights, including free speech and due process.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said last month, without providing evidence, that investigations found that Ozturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist group.

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft is speeding toward another close encounter with an asteroid

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By MARCIA DUNN, Associated Press

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA’s Lucy spacecraft will swoop past a small asteroid this weekend as it makes its way to an even bigger prize: the unexplored swarms of asteroids out near Jupiter.

It will be the second asteroid encounter for Lucy, launched in 2021 on a quest that will take it to 11 space rocks. The close approaches should help scientists better understand our early solar system when planets were forming; asteroids are the ancient leftovers.

The upcoming flyby is a dress rehearsal for 2027 when Lucy reaches its first so-called Trojan asteroid near Jupiter.

Cranking up its three science instruments, the spacecraft on Sunday will observe the harmless asteroid known as Donaldjohanson. The encounter will take place 139 million miles from Earth in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, so far away it will take 12 minutes for each bit of data to reach flight controllers in Colorado.

The paleontologist for whom the asteroid is named plans to be at spacecraft builder and operator Lockheed Martin’s Mission Control for all the action. He discovered the fossil Lucy in Ethiopia 50 years ago; the spacecraft is named after the famous human ancestor.

NASA’s Lucy will venture as close as 596 miles to this asteroid, an estimated 2 ½ miles in length but much shorter in width. Scientists should have a better idea of its size and shape following the brief visit. The spacecraft will zoom by at more than 30,000 mph.

The asteroid is among countless fragments believed to have resulted from a major collision 150 million years ago.

“It’s not going to be a basic potato. We already know that,” said lead scientist Hal Levison of Southwest Research Institute.

Rather, Levison said the asteroid may resemble a bowling pin or even a snowman like Arrokoth, the Kuiper Belt object visited by NASA’s New Horizon spacecraft in 2019. The other possibility is that there are two elongated but separate asteroids far apart.

“We don’t know what to expect. That’s what makes this so cool,” he said.

There will be no communications with Lucy during the flyby as the spacecraft turns its antenna away from Earth in order to track the asteroid. Levison expects to have most of the science data within a day.

Lucy’s next stop — “the main event,” as Levison calls it — will be the Trojan asteroids that share Jupiter’s orbit around the sun. Swarms of Trojans precede and follow the solar system’s largest planet as it circles the sun. Lucy will visit eight of them from 2027 through 2033, some of them in pairs of two.

Lucy’s first asteroid flyby was in 2023 when it swept past little Dinkinesh, also in the main asteroid belt. The spacecraft discovered a mini moon around it.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.