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Jared Bridegan, 33, a senior design manager at Microsoft, was shot dead on the evening of February 16, 2022, on Sanctuary Boulevard in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, after he stopped to move a tire that had been placed in the roadway. His 2-year-old daughter was in the back seat. This recording is the police interview of Henry Tenon, the man whose truck and DNA tied him to the scene, conducted six months after the killing. He makes no admission in it, and he has not been convicted.

Bridegan was a senior design manager at Microsoft who lived in the Jacksonville Beach area with his wife, Kirsten Bridegan, and their two young children. He also had 9-year-old twins from his first marriage to Shanna Gardner, which ended in 2015. They had been in a long custody dispute. Gardner had remarried Fernandez Saldana.

On the evening of February 16, 2022, Bridegan was driving home on Sanctuary Boulevard after dropping off his twins at their mother's home in a custody exchange. His 2-year-old daughter was in the back seat. He stopped to move a tire placed in the roadway and was shot. Two rounds struck and killed him, while two more entered the vehicle where his daughter was sitting. She was not hurt.

The Jacksonville Beach Police Department led the investigation, assisted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the FBI and the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office. Investigators treated the tire as a deliberate trap. A blue Ford F-150 tied to the scene belonged to Henry Tenon, born in 1961, and his DNA was later recovered from the tire. Tenon, a Jacksonville man with a long record of driving offenses, had rented a house from Fernandez Saldana and Gardner in the Biltmore neighborhood. Prosecutors say Tenon and Bridegan did not know each other.

At about 5 a.m. on August 18, 2022, officers stopped Tenon for speeding and took him into custody on a driver license matter. Body camera video later released by the state shows officers discussing the habitual traffic offender ruse used to bring him in without raising the murder. During an interview that morning at the State Attorney's Office on West Monroe Street in Jacksonville, two detectives introduced themselves as members of the sheriff's office habitual offender traffic task force. For roughly an hour they questioned him only about his driving history, suspended license, work and vehicles, including the blue truck he said he owned for about eight months. They then turned to the killing and pressed him with what they said other people involved would say about him. Tenon did not admit any part in the shooting in the recording.

Tenon was held on other charges and charged with second-degree murder about five months later, in January 2023. Prosecutors said Fernandez Saldana paid him at least 10,000 dollars after the murder. Tenon pleaded guilty in 2023 to second-degree murder with a weapon under an agreement that dropped his other charges, established a sentencing range starting at 15 years and required him to testify against Gardner and Fernandez Saldana. At a January 2025 hearing, he told the court that his sworn statement implicating them had been false testimony. Circuit Judge London Kite granted his motion to withdraw the plea on February 17, 2026, and his plea to all charges is now not guilty. He has never been sentenced. He faces conspiracy to commit murder, accessory after the fact to a capital felony, child abuse and second-degree murder. Prosecutors have said they will seek a new indictment.

Mario Fernandez Saldana, who had remarried Gardner, went to trial in Duval County in August 2026. On August 26, 2026, after about four hours of deliberation, a jury convicted him of first-degree murder and solicitation to commit a capital felony, a conviction that carries a mandatory life sentence; no sentencing date had been set in the reporting reviewed. Gardner has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, solicitation to commit murder and child abuse, and has not been tried. As reported on August 27, 2026, the state planned to try Gardner and Tenon together, with jury selection beginning May 3, 2027.

The video is an interview-room recording of Tenon's police questioning and runs about 83 minutes. It presents the interview itself, without narration or a presenter.

[chris]

Part 2 of 2 of the recording described above.