One witness claims that a man who is accused of shooting and killing a woman in Tennessee earlier this week remained at the scene of the crime long after the police had arrived.
According to documents from the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office, Paul S. Park, 29, is charged with one count of criminal homicide.
Alyssa Lokits, 34, is accused of being slain by the defendant on Monday night when she was exercising along the Mill Creek Greenway, a multipurpose urban trail in Nashville’s Antioch district.
In a subsequent conversation with another woman in the vicinity, the suspected murderer is thought to have pretended not to be aware of the gunshot.
Shannon Howard claimed that on the day in question, she saw the awful scenario through the woods twice. On one occasion, the victim seemed to have fallen hard on the trail, but she appeared to be being lifted up by a man. The second time, the witness told a local news outlet, occurred after a number of law enforcement officers had arrived with their emergency lights still flashing.
She reversed her direction and began to go home, Howard said. Then a man in a dark automobile drew up next to her. As he began speaking to her, she took off her brand-new Sony headphones.
“He rolled his window down and leaned out and said: ‘Hey,’ — you know, kind of with a smile — ‘Do you know what happened?'” she stated. “And I said, ‘I think somebody may have hurt themselves. They may have fallen. I’m not sure.’ And he said: ‘Oh, well, that’s a lot of police.’ I said: ‘Yeah, I’m just going to go home.’ And I put my headphones back on.”
According to authorities, Lotkis was discovered with a single gunshot wound to the head in an overgrown section of the trail. In an attempt to reassure the woman that everything would be okay, one of the responding police officers tried to apply pressure with their palm while simultaneously offering the salve of a final chat.
Naturally, though, it wasn’t.
After being taken to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, the victim passed away from her wound. The motivation might have been sexual assault.
Investigators were informed by witnesses that they initially heard a woman shouting, “Help! “He’s attempting to rape me,” followed by the familiar sound of gunfire.
On Tuesday afternoon, Park was taken into custody. The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department said that witnesses said the woman’s killer drove off in a dark, four-door vehicle.
Another motorist gave police access to their dashboard camera while their vehicle was parked on the greenway. According to Nashville Police Chief John Drake, that film purportedly included high-quality footage of the perpetrator and his vehicle.
Investigators received a partial license plate number from the evading vehicle from yet another witness.
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According to authorities, investigators then managed to get a picture of the suspect himself. Park was then identified as the twin brother in a 2021 suicide case by a homicide detective. Park was taken into custody as he was leaving his home in Brentwood, a wealthy Nashville neighborhood.
The department posted on social media footage of the suspect, who was wearing a dark hoodie, black sunglasses, and a red shirt, being taken out of a patrol car and led into a police station.
“When I saw his picture of them bringing him out and him with his sunglasses on, I dropped my phone,” she stated. “And I was like: ‘That’s him. That’s him.’ That’s the gentleman that was pulled up next to me.”
