John Jefferson
Inset Left: Paul Park (Metropolitan Nashville Police Department). Inset Right: Alyssa Lokits (Obituary). Background: The Mill Creek Greenway in Nashville where Lokits was killed (Google Maps).
A man accused of shooting and killing a woman in Tennessee earlier this week allegedly lingered around the scene of the crime until well after police arrived, according to one witness.
Paul S. Park, 29, stands accused of one count of criminal homicide, according to Davidson County Sheriff’s Office records.
The defendant is alleged to have killed Alyssa Lokits, 34, on Monday evening while she was working out at the Mill Creek Greenway — a multi-purpose urban trail in the Antioch neighborhood of Nashville.
Afterward, the alleged killer is believed to have feigned ignorance about the shooting during a brief chat with another woman nearby.
Shannon Howard said she twice took note of the tragic scene through the trees on the day in question. Once, after the victim appeared to have taken a hard fall on the trail — but looked as if she were being helped up by a man. The second time was when several members of law enforcement, emergency lights still flashing, had arrived, the witness told Nashville-based CBS affiliate WTVF.
So, Howard said, she changed her course and started to walk back home. Then a man pulled up alongside her in a dark car. She removed her new Sony headphones as he started talking to her.
“He rolled his window down and leaned out and said: ‘Hey,’ — you know, kind of with a smile — ‘Do you know what happened?”” she told the TV station. “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.”
Lotkis was found in an overgrown area of the trail with a lone gunshot wound to the head, police said. One police officer at the scene used their hand to try and apply pressure — also offering the salve of one last conversation, trying to tell the woman everything would be alright.
But, of course, it wasn’t.
The victim was rushed to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where she eventually succumbed to her wound.
The victim’s obituary remembers her fondly:
Affectionately known to her family as “Lu,” Alyssa was the best of us. Volumes could not adequately describe the woman she was. She deeply loved her family and friends. Always poised, graceful, and beautiful, she was everyone’s champion. An avid traveler, she spoke several languages, and loved to take on new challenges ranging from home renovation, to art, and any topic she set her mind to. In short, she was someone with limitless capability and potential. Alyssa never missed an opportunity to celebrate someone else’s accomplishments. She was a light and inspiration. We are all less without her, and she will be dearly missed by all who knew her.
Sexual assault may have been the motive.
Witnesses told investigators they first heard a woman yelling: “Help! He’s trying to rape me,” and then the tell-tale noise of gunfire.
Park was arrested on Tuesday afternoon. Witnesses described the woman’s killer as driving off in a dark, four-door sedan, according to the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department.
Another person whose car was parked at the greenway turned over their dashboard camera to law enforcement. That footage allegedly contained high-quality video of the suspect and his car, according to Nashville Police Chief John Drake. Yet another witness gave investigators a partial license plate number from the fleeing car.
Next, investigators obtained a photograph of the suspect himself, according to police. Then, a homicide detective recognized Park as the twin brother in a suicide case from 2021. Park was arrested as he left his house in the affluent Nashville suburb of Brentwood.
Footage of the suspect being removed from a patrol car and led inside a police station — wearing a red shirt, a dark hoodie, and black sunglasses — was shared by the department on social media.
That’s when Howard made the connection.
“When I saw his picture of them bringing him out and him with his sunglasses on, I dropped my phone,” she told WTVF. “And I was like: ‘That’s him. That’s him.’ That’s the gentleman that was pulled up next to me.”
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