On August 9, 2023, Paige Pringle, a 28-year-old woman from Jacksonville, Florida, was fatally shot along with Tara Baker, 53, at a railroad crossing in the San Marco area. The incident occurred early in the morning when Pringle, who was presumably heading home after stopping by her workplace at Dos Gatos bar downtown, was driving south down Hendricks Avenue. Her white SUV was forced to stop due to a passing train around 1:40 a.m.
Surveillance video revealed that Ty Christopher Head, a 22-year-old man, was driving behind Pringle in a gray Volkswagen Passat. For reasons that investigators have not been able to determine, Head parked his vehicle, exited, and shot both Pringle, who was still in her SUV, and Baker, who was standing next to her bicycle near the train tracks. The shooting caused Pringle's SUV to coast forward and strike the passing train. Both women died from their injuries, and they did not know each other.
Ty Head, identified as the shooter, had no criminal record but had a history of substance abuse. He had been living in a sober house for addiction recovery in Jacksonville Beach not long before the shooting and was living out of his car at the time of the incident. Despite efforts to understand the motive, Head's actions remain unclear, as he took his own life the day after the double murder using the same 9mm handgun outside Nashville, Tennessee.
The investigation, led by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office (JSO) and assisted by the FBI and ATF, used various law enforcement technologies, including a national ballistics information database called NIBIN, to connect the bullet casings found at the murder scene with those found at the scene of Head's suicide. This confirmed that the same handgun was used in both incidents.
Head had legally purchased the gun in June, despite his documented history of mental health and substance abuse issues. His mother reported that he had been in several sober-living facilities and a mental health facility after dropping out of college in 2020. The day before the murders, JSO had interacted with Head at his job, where he appeared lucid but was upset with his mother.
The case is considered cleared, although the families of the victims will not see justice through the court system. The JSO hopes that providing factual answers about the murders can offer some sense of peace to the families and the community.
