Paige Pringle drove this Ford when she and Tara Baker were shot early Aug. 9 at a railroad crossing on Hendricks Avenue. | News4Jax
Published on September 13, 2023 at 1:17 pm
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A man who shot and killed two women last month at a rail crossing in San Marco has been identified — and he’s dead.
Ty Christopher Head, 22, of Jacksonville, killed himself the next day in Nashville, Tennessee, said Chief of Investigations Alan Parker of the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.
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Paige Pringle, 28, stopped her car about 1:30 a.m. Aug. 9 at the railroad crossing on Hendricks Avenue as a train passed. Tara Baker, 58, did the same on a bicycle. Head, behind them in his gray Volkswagen Passat, got out and shot them for unknown reasons, Parker said.
Initially, police knew only that the shooter had fled in a gray Volkswagen, Parker said. Then 9 mm shell casings found at the site led them to Head and the Sheriff’s Office in Wilson County, Tennessee, Parker said Wednesday.
“Through firearms forensics, experts confirmed that the casing recovered from Head’s suicide scene matched the casings recovered at the double murder scene,” Parker said.
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Parker had no criminal record. All investigators know is that Head was homeless and living in his car at the time of the shooting, after leaving a Jacksonville Beach halfway house for addiction issues, Parker said.
Investigators do not know why Parker shot the women or why he went to Tennessee.
Nothing indicates that Head had been at the Dos Gatos restaurant in Downtown Jacksonville, where Pringle worked, Parker said.
Addressing the Pringle family at the news conference, the chief said he hoped that identifying Head “provides them with some sort of peace.”
