JACKSONVILLE BEACH, Fla. – On Feb. 16, 2022, Jared Bridegan dropped his 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 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.
Bridegan never made it.
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 met with gunfire. At least one bullet missed Bexley by mere inches.
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Bridegan was left lying in the street next to the SUV with the door wide open, and Bexley was crying in the back seat.
Witnesses call 911
One by one, witnesses came upon the scene, according to 911 calls released Wednesday by the State Attorney’s Office.
It seems none of them were quite sure what to make of what they were seeing.
One 911 caller said “a bunch of cars” were backing up on Sanctuary Parkway. He told the 911 operator he’d heard three to four gunshots.
“I just thought you might want to get somebody out here because it was 100% gunshots,” he said.
But two other callers seemed less sure about what had happened.
LISTEN: Press play below to hear 911 calls from night of Jared Bridegan’s murder (WARNING: May include graphic content)
Both reported the SUV in the middle of the road with a man lying on the ground. One thought that maybe the man had suffered a medical emergency.
“He’s just laying there. I’m not sure if he’s having a heart attack or something. He has a little kid in the car. My husband right now is holding her. She was crying,” the woman told the operator.
She confirmed that the man on the ground was unconscious. She didn’t say anything about seeing blood or gunshot wounds.
Neither did another woman who called, explaining that everyone was having to wait because the SUV was blocking Sanctuary Boulevard.
“There is a car standing in the middle of the road. There is a guy (lying) on the floor. There was a little girl inside, and there is (a good) Samaritan guy that came up and took the girl,” she said. “We’re waiting here for help.”
The 911 operators can be heard in the background talking about getting multiple calls. One said someone had reported gunshots, but another said, based on her caller, she thought it was just a disabled vehicle.
When the help the callers were waiting for arrived, it quickly became clear to the first responders that they were dealing with much more than a disabled vehicle.
Crime scene video
Body camera video of the crime scene, which was also released on Wednesday, shows an officer walking up to the SUV, shining a flashlight on the road.
NOTE: News4JAX is sharing some stills from the video, but will not be showing the full video because of its graphic nature.
The driver’s side door is still open, and the SUV’s hazards are flashing in the otherwise eerily dark scene.
The officer comes along the passenger side of the SUV, and it’s clear that the front passenger window had been damaged by the gunfire.
The officer walks further down the street, and then turns back toward the scene, stopping to take a good look at the tire, which was still lying in the middle of the road.
On the ground on the driver’s side, Bridegan’s body is still in the road, covered with a sheet.
It’s impossible to miss that he died violently.
Near Bridegan, the officer notes several shell casings in the roadway, showing just how close the shooter had been when he fired on the unsuspecting 33-year-old father of four.
That shooter seemed to melt into the shadows just as quickly as he had launched his ambush attack.
None of the 911 callers mentioned seeing a shooter or a vehicle leaving the scene.
But eventually, detectives tracked down the man they say pulled the trigger.
It was all part of a murder-for-hire plot set in motion by Gardner and her new husband, Mario Fernandez, investigators say. It was a conspiracy that began in November of 2021, according to court documents.
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, which was released Wednesday, Tenon told investigators that he had been renting a home from Fernandez in Jacksonville’s Biltmore neighborhood for several years.
He said Fernandez never talked about his personal life, and he only saw the man when he came to pick up the rent checks.
By February of 2023, however, Tenon had been arrested in the murder-for-hire plot, eventually pleading guilty and admitting to being the gunman who killed Bridegan.
Tenon’s original court records said he became involved in the conspiracy on Jan. 4, 2022 -- just over a month before Bridegan was killed.
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.
As part of his plea deal, Tenon agreed to testify against Fernandez and Gardner, who are both under indictment for first-degree murder. But Tenon has since changed his tune, making noise about withdrawing his guilty plea, although that has not yet happened.
“There is the belief, at least in the legal community, that Henry Tenon is going to come back and say, ‘What I told you before is not true.’ How much is not true, his involvement, what he did, Shanna Gardner’s involvement, or not, we don’t exactly know,” explained Gene Nichols, a Jacksonville attorney not affiliated with the case.
Nichols said if Tenon backtracks, he could be facing much more than the minimum 15 years in prison that are part of his plea deal. He could even become eligible for the death penalty.
“Where that gets so interesting from a trial standpoint is he’s willing to face the death penalty. Why would he do that unless he’s actually telling the truth when he backtracks? And that’s going to be a very strong argument for the defense,” Nichols said.
Gardner and Fernandez have both pleaded not guilty and are due back in court for a pretrial hearing on Sept. 19. They face the possibility of the death penalty if convicted.