What we now know in the railroad crossing shooting deaths of Paige Pringle and Tara Baker

The day before Jacksonville authorities said a 22-year-old man shot and killed two women waiting separately at a San Marco railroad crossing, they had contacted him at his job following a call from his mother to check on his well-being, according to newly released documents in the Aug. 9 case.

Ty Christopher Head had been acting irrationally and struggled with mental health and substance abuse while living in and out of temporary homes and his car, his family said. But on Aug. 8 during his interaction with police at his place of employment, Kraft-Heinz, “Head appeared lucid and advised he was not a threat to himself or others,” according to the 69-page supplemental report.

One day later, he followed 28-year-old Paige Elizabeth Pringle from her bartending job at Dos Gatos downtown and gunned her down in her vehicle while stopped at Hendricks Avenue and Nira Street, the Sheriff’s Office said. Tara Inez Baker, 53, happened to be there on her bicycle and was the first to suffer his wrath.

Another 24 hours later and some 600 miles away in Tennessee, Head took his own life with the same gun, the Sheriff’s Office announced on Sept. 13.

In the follow-up investigation that included multiple interviews with friends and family of all involved concluded the three did not know one another and weren’t aware of anyone Pringle may have had any issues with at the time.

The closest clue was a co-worker who said he last spoke with her around 3:30 a.m. the previous morning after they finished closing Dos Gatos. He “advised that during their last shift together, victim Pringle had pointed out a patron sitting at the bar that gave her a ‘weird vibe’ but did not know who that person was, nor knew what the ‘weird vibe’ was,” according to the report.

The motive, which outside speculation ranged from a stalker to road rage to drugs, remains unknown. The case even generated a $13,000 reward for tips leading to an arrest.

What became clear early on through nearby security video and witness accounts was that someone was trailing close behind Pringle in another car about 1:30 a.m. moments before the train crossing arms and lights activated. Investigators were able to identify it as a gray Volkswagen Passat.

What happened leading up to the San Marco attack

Pringle’s boyfriend of about 18 months, Patrick Coyle, told police he had just gotten out of jail on a DUI charge and he and Pringle had gone out the night before to celebrate but had gotten no sense of any problems, according to the supplemental report.

Casey Shelton, co-owner at Dos Gatos, also advised that Pringle stopped by the bar sometime after midnight to give him and another employee hand-crocheted animals for their newborn children, the report said. He said she left around 1 a.m. and was unaware of any concerns the popular bartender might have had with any customers or anyone else.

Baker’s fiance, Maurice H. Fisher, said he was on the other side of the Hendricks tracks waiting for her at a gas station. The supplemental report said he hadn’t seen her for several days because she had been on a binge but agreed to meet him that night.

“He stated that the last contact he had from her she told him she was waiting for the train in San Marco, and she would be there soon," he told investigators. "He stated that after waiting nearly an hour for her with no response, he got angry and went home.”

Once the gunfire erupted, Pringle’s vehicle eased forward and crashed into the side of the train and the gunman fled. It was unclear if any words were exchanged before the two women were killed, although one witness said he heard arguing, according to the new documents. There also didn’t appear to be anything stolen.

Ty Head’s suicide and state of mind

On Sept. 6 and 7 investigators tracked a single cellphone activity that matched the path of the suspect vehicle to Vanessa Thomas, whose son was Head and the registered owner of a 2012 Volkswagen Passat, the investigation found. Within hours, that led to the discovery of his obituary from an apparent suicide on Aug. 10 in Wilson County, Tenn.

The Sheriff’s Office there was able to confirm it received a call for service about a suspicious vehicle at the Nashville Superspeedway. They located a gray Volkswagen Passat with Florida tags and the ignition still running, with the front doors open.

When they were unable to locate any occupants, they began a search that led them to discover Head’s body in the woods. The investigation revealed he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head and a Masterpiece Arms Defender 9mm was still in Head’s hand.

On Sept. 8 detectives traveled to Ocala to speak with Head’s parents, Vanessa and Jason Thomas. They explained he had been suffering mental illness and substance abuse for some time.

They said he dropped out of college in 2020 due to COVID-19, and at that time they placed him into a sober-living residence in Nashville, where he remained for about a year and a half before being committed to a mental health facility, the documents said.

They then moved him back to a sober-living residence in Jacksonville, where he remained for another two months. But he he told them he was having issues with another resident, and early this year they moved him to a different sober-living facility in Jacksonville Beach. He remained there until the middle of June.

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“They stated that from January to April of 2023 he seemed really healthy and back to his old self, however around the end of May he came to visit them in Ocala and he was ‘in a bad place,’” the report said. “In mid-June he was kicked out of the sober-living residence for fighting with another resident, at which time he began to live out of his car and hotels for approximately a week. He then began to rent a room through the website ‘PadSplit.’”

His mother said that around this time he began asking for money, which he had never done before. She stated she provided him approximately $2,600 over the course of a month, but when she confronted him about it, he began to respond irrationally leading up to her call for a welfare check to police on Aug. 8.

Final details in the deaths of Paige Pringle and Tara Baker

The Thomases provided detectives Head’s laptop. The analysis did not locate anything tying him to either victim, and nothing of evidentiary value was located, the report said.

On Sept. 11 investigators received the results of an eTrace that showed Head purchased the gun from Coastal Defense LLC on June 24 and had filled out the proper forms. The casings from the suicide matched the Hendricks Avenue murder scene.

Head’s toxicology findings in the autopsy also showed he had no illegal substances in his system.

“During the investigation, it was determined that suspect Ty Head followed victim Pringle’s vehicle beginning on Bay Street, ultimately stopping behind her at the railroad tracks on Hendricks Avenue. For unknown reasons, suspect Head shot victim Baker once before shooting victim Pringle multiple times. Suspect Head then fled the scene and ultimately ended up committing suicide in Wilson County, Tennessee, less than 24 hours later,” the report concluded.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Documents detail Jacksonville rail crossing shooting of Paige Pringle