Jared Bridegan’s last drive home and the evidence that reached a Florida jury

Dinner with the twins was a standing date for Jared Bridegan. On February 16, 2022, he dropped them off at their mother’s house in Jacksonville Beach and started home with his two-year-old daughter in her car seat. A tire lay in the road. Bridegan got out of his Volkswagen to move it and was shot to death. His daughter was still strapped in behind him.

Four years later, at the trial of Mario Fernandez Saldana, jurors got to see the road before Bridegan arrived. Investigators had pieced together surveillance recordings of a Ford pickup. In the hour before the shooting, something resembling a tire was visible in its bed. In later footage the bed appeared empty. A detective testified that the pickup passed ahead of Bridegan’s Volkswagen by about twenty seconds. The defense drew attention to another detail in the footage after the shots. As the truck drove away, a figure could also be seen running from the scene.

The tire in the road had a metal rim. Police said DNA on it matched Henry Tenon, who had rented from Fernandez Saldana. The pickup was registered to Tenon’s father, investigators testified. A tire found by a garage at a rental property had been made at the same plant on the same date as the tire in the road. The manufacturing information could narrow the search. The DNA was what tied a particular person to the rim.

Fernandez Saldana was married to Shanna Gardner, the twins’ mother. To convict him, prosecutors had to explain how a dispute over parenting had come to involve his former tenant. Bridegan’s widow, Kirsten, described how even medical appointments and school meetings had become points of contention between the parents. Jurors saw three checks Fernandez Saldana wrote to Tenon after the killing, totaling $10,000. They carried explanations including handyman work. The prosecution argued that he had paid Tenon to kill Bridegan. His lawyer argued that Fernandez Saldana had nothing to gain from Bridegan’s death.

The jury convicted Fernandez Saldana of first-degree murder and solicitation on August 26, 2026. Tenon had once agreed to plead guilty and cooperate, then withdrew from the agreement. In October he pleaded not guilty under an indictment that joins his case with Gardner’s. Neither has been convicted in Bridegan’s death.

The first jury could decide that Fernandez Saldana arranged the killing without deciding either of the other defendants’ cases. When Gardner and Tenon come before a jury, the truck on camera, the marks on the tire and the writing on those checks will matter for a different reason. The state will have to show what each defendant did to turn a father’s regular trip home into his last.

Research Sources

The following resources were consulted to verify and update this article.

• Associated Press courtroom reporting on the tire, checks and verdict
• News4JAX on the indictment and pleas
• Court TV’s account of the surveillance footage, tire comparisons and defense questioning at trial