A Tire in the Road, Then an Ambush: The First Conviction in the Jared Bridegan Murder-for-Hire Case

A tire in the middle of the road. A father who stopped to move it. And, prosecutors say, a plan set in motion months earlier by people he once trusted. More than three years after Jared Bridegan was shot dead in the street, a Jacksonville jury has convicted the first of three people charged in his killing.

On August 26, a jury found Mario Fernandez Saldana guilty of first-degree murder and solicitation to commit a capital felony, reaching its verdict in under four hours after an eight-day trial. Prosecutors said Fernandez Saldana wrote checks — labeled for lawn work, roof work, and a startup company — that were actually payment to arrange the killing of Jared Bridegan, a 33-year-old Microsoft senior design manager. Fernandez Saldana faces a mandatory life sentence, with a sentencing hearing set for October 5.

Bridegan was killed on February 16, 2022, in Jacksonville Beach, just after dropping his twins off at his ex-wife's house, with his young daughter still in the car. Police say he came upon a tire deliberately placed in the road, stopped to move it, and was shot several times before he could get back in his car — an ambush, not a robbery or road rage, according to Jacksonville Beach police. The case has drawn national attention because of who prosecutors say was behind it: not a stranger, but Bridegan's own ex-wife and the man she later married.

Prosecutors allege the killing was arranged to resolve a custody dispute and to make Bridegan's ex-wife, Shanna Gardner, trustee of her trust fund. Henry Tenon is accused of being the gunman; he had confessed at one point but withdrew that plea, and his trial is scheduled for March 2027. Gardner — Fernandez Saldana's wife at the time of the murder — faces her own charges, with jury selection in her trial beginning August 31. Prosecutors have pointed to discovery messages in which Gardner allegedly said she wished Bridegan would "disappear" years before his death; her attorney has argued those messages were jokes, not evidence of a plot. None of that has been tested in front of a jury yet — Gardner is legally presumed innocent until her own trial concludes.

Kirsten Bridegan's statement after the verdict was measured but pointed: justice "in part," with two more trials still to come. Legal analyst Gene Nichols has noted the case against Gardner will look different from the one against her estranged husband: "There are no checks. Those checks were not written by Shanna Gardner," he said, suggesting prosecutors will need a different kind of evidence to convict her.

Jury selection begins August 31 for Shanna Gardner's trial, and Henry Tenon is set to face trial in March 2027. Fernandez Saldana returns to court for sentencing on October 5, though under Florida law a first-degree murder conviction carries a mandatory life sentence. Whether the other two defendants are convicted remains entirely open — Fernandez Saldana's conviction resolves his case alone, not the broader allegations against Gardner and Tenon.

One conviction down, two trials to go — the Fernandez Saldana verdict answers who prosecutors say wrote the checks, but the case's central, still-unresolved question is whether Jared Bridegan's own ex-wife helped plan his death.