Innocent Bystander: A Student Wrongly Pegged as the Florida State University Shooter Details His ‘Terrifying’ Experience to NewsGuard
By Macrina Wang
Florida State University student Oliver Cheese, 20, was on the opposite end of campus when a gunman opened fire in the campus’ Student Union area on April 17, 2025, killing two people and injuring six. That didn’t stop fringe social media users from falsely accusing Cheese of being the shooter.
In an exclusive interview with NewsGuard, Cheese spoke about the experience of being falsely accused of a heinous crime in a social-media environment in which falsehoods and rumors so often outpace the truth. He also reflected on a polarized political environment in which partisans looking to advance their agenda reflexively seek to pin blame on the other side, without evidence to back up their claims.
“It was so jarring to realize because I’d seen it before, of course, every time that a tragedy like this happens, there are always those people who will try and spread misinformation for political gain,” Cheese, a progressive campus activist, told NewsGuard in an April 28, 2025, Zoom interview. “But it was terrifying to have it happen to me, to actually be the target of that, to know that the people out there thought that I was a murderer.”
Cheese, a sophomore studying economics and political science, said that when the shots rang out shortly after noon on April 17, he was in an environmental ethics class, a 15-minute walk from the site of the shooting. In those first minutes following the mass shooting and the ensuing panic, misinformation was running rampant as students and others tried to glean real-time information in group chats and on social media.
Many were circulating false images or claiming there were multiple shooters, Cheese said. Then, suddenly, he found himself at the center of the tragedy.
Conservative social media users circulated an old photo of Cheese, falsely identifying him as the shooter. The image, which quickly reached hundreds of thousands of users across X, Facebook, Threads, Telegram, and various forums, actually had been taken at a Jan. 14, 2025, protest against U.S. President Donald Trump, organized by the progressive student group Tallahassee Students for a Democratic Society, a group that Cheese helps lead.
In the photo, Cheese is holding a sign with slogans including “Fight Trump and the GOP agenda!” “Stand with Palestine!” “Stop attacks on immigrants!” and “Defend women’s & LGBTQ rights!” Commentators cited this photo to claim that it depicted the suspected shooter and proved that the shooter was an anti-Trump radical leftist.
“It was a panicked rush,” Cheese recalled. “My parents were calling me, begging me basically to let them come up and take me back down to Tampa [Cheese’s hometown] because they thought my life was in danger. I, my parents, my friends were afraid people would try to assault me and try to kill me.”
In fact, in the hours after the attack, Leon County Sheriff’s Office identified the alleged shooter as FSU student Phoenix Ikner, the stepson of a local sheriff’s deputy. Ikner, a registered Republican and apparent Trump supporter, bears little physical resemblance to Cheese: Ikner has straight brown hair and a broader face, while Cheese has curly dark-blonde hair.
The confusion may have originated from a Jan. 19, 2025, article on campus news site FSUNews.com, which included the now-viral photo of Cheese at the protest as well as a quote from Ikner, who was merely an onlooker at the protest.
Cheese told NewsGuard that he considered taking legal action against the social media users who smeared him but decided that was impractical. “These people aren't associating their real names with these Twitter [X] accounts,” he said.
“The people I really feel bad for are the families of Rob Morales and Tiru Chabba,” Cheese said, referring to the university dining worker and campus vendor killed in the attack. “I really hurt when I think about all the people who were personally impacted by the tragedy, who after that see it being turned around and lied about by the far right.”