During her emotional testimony, Kirsten Bridegan vividly recounted the turbulent co-parenting relationship she and her late husband Jared Bridegan endured with Shanna Gardner and her husband, Mario Fernandez-Saldana, who now faces trial.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Visibly moved, Jared Bridegan’s widow shared poignant memories on Monday as she took the stand to describe her husband’s fraught co-parenting dynamics with ex-wife Shanna Gardner. She also recounted the deeply troubling period leading up to Jared’s tragic murder in 2022.
Joining several key witnesses for the state, Kirsten Bridegan provided crucial testimony on the opening day of Mario Fernandez-Saldana’s murder trial.
The prosecution accuses Fernandez-Saldana of playing a critical role in orchestrating Jared Bridegan’s murder. Allegedly, Fernandez-Saldana and Gardner conspired to eliminate Bridegan due to an ongoing custody battle over Gardner and Bridegan’s twin children.
Prosecutors kicked off Monday’s session with compelling opening statements. They outlined the sequence of events leading to the murder, presenting evidence that purportedly links the accused gunman, Henry Tenon, to the heinous crime.
Assistant State Attorney Christina Stifler told jurors that Bridegan’s murder was a “planned, tactical ambush.”
Prosecutors said Bridegan had just dropped off the children he shared with Gardner at Gardner’s Jacksonville Beach home on Feb. 16, 2022, when he encountered a tire placed in the middle of Sanctuary Boulevard.
As Bridegan got out of his vehicle to move the tire, Stifler said a gunman fired four shots, striking him twice.
Stifler said surveillance footage captured a blue Ford F-150 driving along the road before the murder and leaving shortly afterward. The truck appeared to have an object consistent with a tire in its bed before the shooting, according to Stifler.
Investigators later determined the rim of the tire at the crime scene belonged to a Ford F-150, and that it contained Tenon’s DNA.
Stifler told jurors that a tire found at a home where Tenon had been staying and in which Fernandez-Saldana owned, was determined to be the same make and model and DOT number as the tire found at crime scene.
Investigators obtained Google location data from Tenon’s phone that showed it was in Jacksonville Beach around the time of the murder and a block or two away from the scene minutes afterward, Stifler said.
Prosecutors also pointed to financial transactions between Fernandez-Saldana and Tenon. Three checks written by Fernandez-Saldana were deposited into Tenon’s account in March and April 2022.
Stifler said one check Fernandez-Saldana wrote Tenon, worth $2,000, was for landscaping. A $3,000 check was for “keeping up the roof,” and a $5,000 check said “kickstarter good luck!!”
Stifler characterized the payments as an attempt to hide money for a murder “in plain sight” by making the transactions appear legitimate.
Fernandez-Saldana’s attorney, James Hill, argued during his opening statement that there is no evidence suggesting Fernandez-Saldana wanted Bridegan dead.
“You will never hear a witness on the witness stand, see a text message or an email, any communication from Mario Fernandez and Henry Tenon, intending that this crime be committed,” Hill told jurors.
Hill also argued that the divorce and custody dispute between Bridegan and Gardner was resolved through a consent final judgment, and that the evidence would not show the kind of bitter conflict prosecutors described.
Kirsten Bridegan speaks on tense co-parenting relationship
Kirsten took the stand shortly after 2:30 p.m. Monday.
She testified that she met Jared on a dating app in early 2017 while she was living in Charlotte. The two married in October 2017 and had two children together, Bexley and London.
At the time they married, Jared was involved in a child support and custody dispute with Gardner.
Kirsten described the co-parenting relationship between the two couples as extremely tense.
“It was pretty terrible,” Kirsten said. “There’s absolutely no trust, so everything was in writing, text, email.”
She said the four adults generally avoided speaking with one another in person and relied on written communication so there would be a record of what was said.
Jared and Gardner shared custody of their two children on a week-to-week basis, Kirsten testified. She said Gardner eventually wanted Fernandez-Saldana to be allowed to supervise the children overnight on her week with them, without Gardner present.
Kirsten said she and Jared strongly opposed that arrangement.
“It was something she wanted to allow, and we fought back really hard,” Kirsten testified.
She also said that after she and Jared had their own children, she felt the co-parenting relationship became worse.
“I felt like after that, the things that my stepkids would come home saying, it kind of intensified, as far as the negativity they were hearing,” she said. “When it was something where all four of us were at, it was very tense, you could just feel the tension,” she said.
She testified that Jared would restrain himself and remain quiet during those encounters.
Kirsten describes final conversation with Jared
Kirsten testified that she and Jared spoke by phone between 7:45 and 7:52 p.m. on the night he was killed.
She said Jared had just dropped off his children with Gardner at Gardner’s home, and that the end of their phone conversation seemed unusual.
“It was strange because after I was like, ‘Alright, love you, I’ll see you soon,’ he was just quiet and I was like, okay?” she testified.
After becoming concerned that Jared wasn’t responding to her calls and texts, Kirsten said she drove from their Nocatee home toward Jacksonville Beach with her mother to see whether he had been involved in a crash.
She said she called Jared’s phone multiple times and eventually a police officer answered and told her to go to the police department.
Kirsten said she was frustrated because she did not yet know what had happened to Jared and officers were questioning her extensively. She testified that she suggested investigators look into Gardner and Fernandez-Saldana.
Kirsten became visibly emotional later in her testimony when she looked at photos of Jared in court.
The day after Jared’s murder, Kirsten said she asked Gardner to visit her home when Gardner’s children were informed of their father’s death. Fernandez-Saldana was also there, and Kirsten said she brought her father.
Kirsten testified that she has had “very limited” contact with her stepchildren since Jared’s death.
Kirsten agreed during her testimony that Gardner and Fernandez-Saldana had never threatened violence against her or Jared.
Jurors also heard the state acknowledge Monday that investigators could not determine exactly where Fernandez-Saldana was at the time of Bridegan’s murder because there was no cellphone data from his device during the shooting. Fernandez-Saldana’s attorney James Hill said this was due to “engineering gaps.”
Stifler said that Fernandez-Saldana factory-reset his phone in August 2022 after Tenon was arrested in the case, preventing investigators from determining why data was missing. She said phone records, however, showed that Fernandez-Saldana and Tenon had exchanged roughly 70 calls and text messages in February 2022, despite Tenon no longer being a tenant of Fernandez-Saldana.
The trial is scheduled to continue Tuesday.
