Published: 00:37 BST, 18 August 2026 | Updated: 00:37 BST, 18 August 2026
In opening statements in the trial of Mario Fernandez, the man accused of first-degree murder and solicitation in the Florida murder-for-hire plot of Microsoft executive Jared Bridegan, the state was at pains to drive home the desperate nature of Bridegan's final moments.
Assistant State Attorney Christina Stifler faced the jury in Jacksonville's Duval County Circuit Courthouse. 'The Sanctuary neighborhood is exactly what it sounds like,' she said. 'A small residential enclave of nice homes with golf carts in the driveway.
'On February 16, 2022, it was anything but that for Jared Bridegan. Instead, it was a site of execution.'
Bridegan, 33, was shot when he stepped out of his car to move a tire from the road. It had been placed there as a trap. Two bullets struck him, two struck the car, tracking just inches away from his two-year-old daughter, Bexley – strapped in her car-seat while her father died, face down, on the asphalt.
He was, Stifler said, 'a man executed in front of his child by a ghost in the darkness.'
In the moments after the shooting, the car's infotainment system repeatedly lit up with the name Kirsten – Bridegan's wife, waiting at home, with their seven-month-old child, London. She called repeatedly and with growing unease.
But in the end, it was four words from a scared and confused little girl that brought home the horror of that night more forcefully than any amount of rhetoric could.
Jared Bridegan, 33, was on his way home on February 16, 2022, when he was gunned down in the middle of the road while his toddler watched on in horror in Jacksonville Beach, Florida
Maria Fernandez (pictured on Monday) is now on trial over Bridegan's death. He married Gardner after she and the victim divorced in February 2015
Bridegan leaves behind his widowed wife, Kirsten. He was on his way home to her when he was fatally shot
Kirsten, 34, sitting in the front row of the gallery, her long hair falling in waves over her shoulders, her dress black, dabbed tears with a white handkerchief as she heard her daughter Bexley's voice played out to the court.
Bexley's 'testimony' came in the form of a brief video made by Jonelle Cruz, the Good Samaritan who took care of her, wrapping her in a blanket and taking her into their car, after she and her partner made the awful discovery of Bridegan, lying in the road in a pool of blood.
When asked why she had made the video, Cruz, who briefly testified after lunch, said: 'Just for myself. She was just the cutest, bravest, strongest little girl I've ever seen in my life.'
She was, Cruz and her partner Shawn Borja, who testified directly after, said, 'panting and shaking.' 'She kept telling us that her daddy was hurt on the ground and asking if the police were going to help her daddy,' Cruz recalled.
