JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The man charged with arranging the fatal ambush of his wife’s ex-husband heads to trial Monday, more than four years after Jared Bridegan was repeatedly shot outside his vehicle while his 2-year-old daughter was strapped in a car seat.
Investigators say a tire was placed in the road in a plot to distract and kill Bridegan, 33, in Jacksonville Beach in 2022. They allege it was a murder-for-hire scheme involving his ex-wife, Shanna Gardner, and her current husband, Mario Fernandez.
Both are charged with first-degree murder in Bridegan’s death, along with the man investigators say pulled the trigger, Henry Tenon, who lived at a property owned by the couple.
Fernandez is the first of the three to face trial, which begins with opening statements Monday from the prosecution and the defense.
News4JAX is in the courtroom and will stream the trial live. Press play above to watch.
Bridegan’s family, including his widow Kirsten, were in court on Monday. Fernandez’s family was also in court.
Bridegan, a Microsoft design manager, was fatally shot on Feb. 16, 2022, 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 contentious ongoing custody disputes over their twins after divorcing in 2015.
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Police found that Gardner, now 39, “hated Mr. Bridegan, hated having to share custody of the children with him and wanted him dead,” Judge London Kite wrote, summarizing evidence after a bond hearing in 2024.
Fernandez, 38, is accused of paying one of his tenants, Henry Tenon, now 65, at least $10,000 for fatally shooting Bridegan. Investigators say Tenon’s DNA was on the tire that was blocking Bridegan’s path.
Tenon had pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in 2023 and agreed to testify against Fernandez. But he withdrew the plea earlier this year and will get his own trial in 2027.
Fernandez’s 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."
Kite has repeatedly explained to the 12 jurors and four alternates that they can not look up anything about the case or talk about it with anyone.
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 jury selection 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 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.
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“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,” Assistant State Attorney Alan 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.
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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.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.