The 22-year-old man who shot and killed two women in the San Marco area last month took his own life the next day with the same gun, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office said in a news conference Wednesday.
Investigators have identified Ty Christopher Head as the shooter who killed Paige Pringle, 28, and Tara Baker, 53, early in the morning on Aug. 9.
JSO Chief of Investigations Alan Parker said investigators do not definitively know why Head shot the women.
After investigators identified Head as the shooter, they learned he had shot and killed himself outside Nashville the day after the double murder. Parker said that means the case is cleared.
Parker said Head had no criminal record but had a history of substance abuse and had been in the Jacksonville area in a halfway house not long before the shooting.
Parker indicated that Head was living out of his car at the time of the shooting. He said Head has no documented history of mental illness.
Pringle’s parents were at Wednesday’s news conference and were acknowledged by both Parker and Sheriff T.K. Waters.
The shooting
Investigators said Pringle was stopped in a white SUV southbound on Hendricks Avenue at the railroad intersection around 1:40 a.m. Aug. 9 as a train was crossing.
Head was in his gray Volkswagen Passat behind Pringle and for reasons investigators do not know, got out of his car and shot Baker, who was standing next to her bicycle on the sidewalk, and Pringle.
The shooting caused Pringle’s SUV to coast forward, striking the passing train.
Both women died as a result of the shootings. They did not know each other.
Surveillance video showed Head’s Passat driving behind Pringle just before the shooting. The driving distance from Dos Gatos bar, where Pringle stopped that night, to the shooting scene is only about 2 miles.
Related: 911 callers describe the scene after two women were killed in San Marco | Dos Gatos employee identified as one of 2 women killed in shooting near San Marco train
Pringle was a beloved employee at the popular bar in downtown Jacksonville.
The surveillance video, which a Hendricks Avenue business shared with News4JAX, shows the SUV and Passat drive by around 1:30 a.m. Wednesday.
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