Ex-US Marine Arrested for Murder in Tampa Shooting | Media Pyro

TAMPA — Police have arrested a suspect in the fatal shooting of a man Sunday under an overpass at Northdale Mabry Highway and Hillsborough Avenue.

Timothy Scott McGovern, 29, was arrested on a charge of first degree murder with a firearm in connection with a shooting in Tampa late Tuesday.

Tampa Police Chief Mary O’Connor said at a news conference Wednesday that McGovern knew the man around 1:30 a.m. Sunday. McGovern is a former U.S. Marine with a history of mental health issues, O’Connor said.

O’Connor has not released the victim’s name. The department generally does not release the names of crime victims because of the Marsy Act. The police had earlier said that he was 30 years old.

“Efficient and swift police work by all areas of the Tampa Police Department made our community safer by getting this very dangerous individual off the street quickly,” O’Connor said.

A call in another part of the city late Saturday helped detectives crack a murder case.

About four hours before the murder, police received a call about a man firing a handgun into the water on Bayshore Boulevard. A witness told police that she and a friend of hers were riding a bicycle when a man, later determined to be McGovern, approached her.

“He said, ‘I have my target,’ and pulled a gun from his waistband and started firing the gun into the water,” O’Connor said. “As the witness and her friends fled the area in fear for their lives, McGovern continued to fire the gun into the water.”

Police responded to the scene and found surveillance video showing a man riding a bike northbound in the area shortly after the shooting. Detectives found the 9mm casings and placed them in a database called the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network, or NIBIN.

Detectives investigating Sunday’s fatal shooting on Hillsborough Avenue found 9mm shell casings at the scene and entered them into a database. Casings connecting the two incidents to the same gun matched, O’Connor said.

Investigators developed a plan to find the man seen in the Bayshore Boulevard video. On Tuesday, an officer spotted McGovern riding his bike along West Hillsborough Avenue, less than a mile from the scene of the murder.

During an interview with detectives, McGovern identified himself as the man in the video and admitted to firing the gun into the water, police said.

“McGovern admitted to having previous encounters with the homicide victim, (and) that on the night of the murder, he walked to the underpass and proceeded to take the victim’s life with that gun,” O’Connor said.

McGovern also admitted to stabbing the same man on July 4, she said.

Detectives are still working out how well the two men knew each other, O’Connor said.

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Investigators obtained a search warrant for McGovern’s home and found the 9 mm handgun used in the killing and the Bayshore incident, O’Connor said. The gun was reloaded.

Detectives also found what O’Connor described as a “litany of manifestos” containing “disturbing” writings. She did not elaborate on the contents, citing the ongoing investigation.

McGovern, who served in the U.S. Marines from 2012 to 2014, was honorably discharged following a drug arrest, according to O’Connor. More recently, he has been taken into protective custody multiple times under the state’s Baker and Marchman laws, the chief said.

McGovern was being held Wednesday without bail at the Hillsborough County Jail, records show.