JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – With 12 jurors and four alternates selected, the trial for Mario Fernandez Saldana will begin Monday with opening statements from the prosecution and the defense.
The jury, made up of seven women and five men, will hear the state’s case against Fernandez in the February 2022 ambush killing of 33-year-old Jared Bridegan, the ex-husband of Fernandez’s now-estranged wife, Shanna Gardner.
NOTE: His attorneys refer to him as Mr. Fernandez, so News4JAX will use only Fernandez on second reference.
The father of four was fatally shot while on his way home after dropping off the twin children he shared with Gardner at her home in Jacksonville Beach. The two were in ongoing custody disputes over their twins.
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With his 2-year-old daughter, Bexley, strapped in her car seat, Bridegan stopped to remove a tire that had been left in the road. Prosecutors say the tire was part of a ruse to make Bridegan an easy target.
They say Henry Tenon was the man who pulled the trigger, missing Bexley by mere inches, and that Tenon’s DNA was found on the tire.
They also say Tenon was not alone that night. Someone drove off in a truck from the shooting scene, while Tenon ran away on foot.
According to prosecutors, the only link between Tenon and Bridegan was Fernandez, who was Tenon’s landlord and boss in 2022.
The state has accused Fernandez and Gardner of hiring Tenon to kill Bridegan. All three are under indictment for first-degree murder and other charges and have each pleaded not guilty.
Fernandez is the first of the three to go on trial. His trial is scheduled for Aug. 17-28.
Gardner will go on trial after Fernandez, with jury selection from Aug. 31-Sept. 4, and the trial from Sept. 8-25.
Tenon will go on trial in March 2027.
Neither Gardner nor Tenon will testify in Fernandez’s trial.
Attorney Gene Nichols, who is not connected with the case, explained what to expect during Monday’s opening statements.
“The state is going to lay out their case step by step by step. They are going to go ahead and preview all of the evidence so that way when they get up for closing, they’re going to say, ‘We told you what you were going to see. We told you the evidence that will convict him, and we presented all of that,’” Nichols said. “What I expected you will hear from the defense is, ”Don’t just listen to direct examination; you have to listen to cross-examination. I expect the defense to rely upon what the rules are when it comes to witnesses’ credibility and taking all of it or taking none of it, and don’t forget to listen to the cross-examination."
Jury selection
After narrowing a pool of about 150 potential jurors down to around 80 this week, attorneys asked deeper questions of the men and women who responded for jury duty.
Nichols said both sides did a good job getting detailed responses from the potential jurors.
Assistant State Attorney Alan Mizrahi wanted to know about the prospective jurors’ personal backgrounds, any experiences they’ve had with police or the courts, personal beliefs that might be considered controversial, and any issues that might affect their ability to be impartial.
He also asked if they’d ever had to fire an employee, if they or a family member or friend had experienced a bitter divorce involving children, and whether they understand the difference between free speech and someone asking them to commit a crime.
Defense attorney Jesse Dreicer asked the potential jurors if they understood the presumption of innocence, the burden of “beyond a reasonable doubt,” and the fact that Fernandez has the right not to testify and not have that held against him.
“The State Attorney’s Office will always try to portray that finding someone guilty beyond a reasonable doubt is not that hard, while the defense is always saying this is the highest standard you could possibly meet, so there is a fight between whether or not it’s easy to show reasonable doubt or hard to show reasonable doubt, and you will hear that from both the state and the defense,” Nichols said.
Dreicer also asked the jurors if they believed that someone can know a person who committed a crime without being guilty of the crime themselves, and he asked several individuals about their ability to be impartial based on their own experiences and the experiences of their loved ones.
At one point, Dreicer questioned the jurors about whether they would be able to weigh equally any competing evidence presented by opposing “expert witnesses.”
During the process, at least two jurors were excused because people reported that they had been talking about the case outside of court.
Judge London Kite repeatedly explained to the potential jurors this week that they could not look up anything about the case or talk about it with anyone.
Those rules still apply heading into trial on Monday.
As part of the preparation for trial, Kite previously ordered that the seated jurors’ names be kept anonymous until 60 days after the trial, which is typical in high-profile cases. The jurors were referred to only by their numbers during questioning to protect their identities.
Timeline: How we got here
More than four years ago, Jared Bridegan dropped his then-9-year-old twin children off at the home of his ex-wife, Shanna Gardner, after a “date night” with their dad.
He left Gardner’s Jacksonville Beach home on Feb. 16, 2022, with his 2-year-old daughter, Bexley, strapped in her car seat in the back of his dark-colored SUV. They were headed back to St. Augustine.
But the 33-year-old Microsoft employee never made it home.
Following his normal route through the Sanctuary neighborhood, Bridegan suddenly had to stop in the area of Jacksonville Drive, America Avenue and Sanctuary Boulevard.
A tire was in the road.
When Bridegan stepped out of his SUV, he was ambushed by gunfire. At least one bullet missed Bexley by mere inches in her car seat.
In previous interviews, Kirsten Bridegan said Bexley described the loud noise of the gunfire, calling it “the boom.”
“She says, ‘Boom! Boom! Boom! Daddy on the ground,’” Kirsten explained.
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Neighbors’ surveillance cameras from the Sanctuary subdivision caught the sound of those gunshots just before 8 p.m.
Jared Bridegan was left lying in the street next to the SUV with the door wide open, and the shooter seemed to melt into the shadows just as quickly as he had launched his ambush attack.
None of the 911 callers that night mentioned seeing a shooter or a vehicle leaving the scene.
LISTEN: Press play below to hear 911 calls from night of Jared Bridegan’s murder (WARNING: May include graphic content)
The state has since said that the shooter ran off on foot and someone else drove away from the scene in a pick-up truck. Prosecutors also said they have Tenon’s DNA on the tire that was left in the road.
NEW INFORMATION: Prosecutor drops bombshell in Jared Bridegan murder-for-hire case: Accused gunman was not alone on night of shooting | RELATED: Defense attorneys for Mario Fernandez briefly discussed plea deal with state in Jared Bridegan murder-for-hire case
“When the victim was killed, there is a person that fled on foot and a person that fled in a vehicle. We know that Henry Tenon left his DNA behind on that tire. And we know that Henry Tenon was not driving the pick-up truck that fled the scene,” Mizrahi said during a hearing before jury selection began. He was arguing that this was proof of a deeper conspiracy in the case.
Eventually, detectives tracked down the man they say pulled the trigger.
Investigators say that it was all part of a murder-for-hire plot set in motion by Gardner and her second husband, Mario Fernandez. It was a conspiracy that began in November of 2021, according to court documents.
Interactive Timeline
Alleged murder-for-hire scheme
According to detectives, Gardner was tired of sharing custody of her twin children with Bridegan.
Fernandez, she knew, could “take care of him” because of his military background, Gardner told a friend. At least that’s what the friend told investigators as she detailed the strained marriage between Gardner and Fernandez and the contentious ongoing custody battle between Gardner and Bridegan.
RELATED: A friend of Shanna Gardner said she could help in Jared Bridegan’s murder case. Here’s what she told investigators | How investigators say they untangled conspiracy to kill Jared Bridegan
Investigators say that’s exactly what Fernandez did, hiring Henry Tenon, a tenant at one of his properties, to kill Bridegan.
In his initial interview with police in July 2022, Tenon told investigators that he had been renting a home from Fernandez in Jacksonville’s Biltmore neighborhood for several years.
Tenon’s original court records said he became involved in the conspiracy on Jan. 4, 2022 -- just over a month before Bridegan was killed.
The state says it has evidence of communications between Tenon and Fernandez in the days, weeks and “on the day of the particular crime.”
Investigators said when Tenon was arrested on an unrelated felony driving charge in August 2022, they questioned him about Bridegan’s murder and a Ford F-150 truck they had been searching for since the shooting.
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Tenon was later arrested in Bridegan’s murder, and investigators said the single link between Tenon and Bridegan was Fernandez.
In 2023, Tenon pleaded guilty and admitted to being the gunman who killed Bridegan, but he has since backtracked, and Judge Kite granted his motion to withdraw his guilty plea and go to trial.
He is now under indictment for some of the same charges as Gardner and Fernandez.
Gardner is charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, solicitation to commit a capital felony and child abuse.
Tenon is charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, child abuse, possession of a firearm by a felon and accessory after the fact.
State prosecutors initially said they would be seeking the death penalty against Gardner and Fernandez if they were convicted, but they have since taken the death penalty off the table, with the support of Bridegan’s widow, Kirsten, and his family.