Florida man’s ex-wife arrested over murder-for-hire plot to kill him

Detectives arrested Shanna Gardner-Fernandez on Thursday in Washington after a grand jury indicted her for the murder last year in Florida of her ex-husband, who she had been fighting with over the custody of their twins since their divorce in 2015.

The conflict ended when Gardner-Fernandez’s second husband, Mario Fernandez, hired his tenant Henry Tenon to kill her ex-husband, Jared Bridegan, a Microsoft executive who lived with his second wife and his two younger kids in St. Augustine, according to detectives.

Detectives accused Fernandez, 34, of hiring Tenon, 62, to fatally shoot Bridegan, 33, after he had dropped off his 9-year-old twins at Gardner-Fernandez’s home — just two days after Valentine’s Day in 2022 ― in Jacksonville Beach.

Tenon confessed to placing a tire on a one-way street to force Bridegan to stop while he was driving his Volkswagen Atlas home. This way he lured him to get out of the car to move the tire out of the way and shot him at close range, according to police.

Bridegan’s 2-year-old daughter was strapped in a car seat alone in the back seat of the Volkswagen when the murder happened, according to police. Bridegan, a father of four, had left his 7-month-old baby girl back home with his wife in St. Augustine.

While announcing Tenon’s arrest in January, Jacksonville Beach Police Chief Gene Paul N. Smith described the murder as a “planned and target ambush.”

Tenon later pleaded guilty to second-degree murder as part of a plea agreement that included testifying as a witness in court, according to prosecutors.

Federal agents and deputies later arrested Fernandez in Orange County on charges of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, solicitation to commit a capital felony, and child abuse in Duval County.

Gardner-Fernandez is facing charges of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.