Jared Bridegan had gotten out of his car, where his 2-year-old was in her car seat, to move a tire obstructing the road when he was shot and killed at close range. No one has been arrested in the February slaying. Bridegan's wife wants to see that changed
Mystery surrounds the February assassination of Microsoft executive Jared Bridegan. The 33-year-old father of four was on his usual way home after dropping off two of his children from a previous marriage when he came upon a tire obstructing the road.
With his 2-year-old daughter buckled up in her car seat, Bridegan stopped his vehicle and got out to move the tire.
It was then that someone shot and killed Bridegan at close range. Police believe the tire was left in the road to lure him out of the car.
Agreeing with investigators that her husband’s killing appears to have been a hit or an ambush, his grieving widow said she cannot think of any reason why someone would want her husband dead.
“Honestly Jared is such a great man, through-and-through good husband, colleague... it would take someone totally evil to do this,” Kirsten Bridegan, 30, told Inside Edition.
The killing took place in the upscale Florida community of Jacksonville Beach minutes after he had gotten off the phone with his wife.
“I actually talked to him on the phone right after he dropped his twins off,” she said. ”My daughter in the back said, ‘I got ice cream mom.’ He said OK, see you soon.”
The sound of gunfire was captured on a neighbor’s camera. And Bridegan’s young daughter bore witness to her father’s killing.
“Mostly it’s sounds she refers to,” Kirsten Bridegan said. “’Boom’ is how she describes the gunshots. She says, ‘Boom, boom, boom,’ and then she says, ‘Daddy on the ground.’
“It’s excruciating. I'm so grateful she wasn’t hit by a stray bullet. I can’t imagine how evil it is for someone to do that with a child in the car,” she continued.
Now she struggles with how she’ll raise her children without their father.
“He was an awesome dad. He loved babies, snuggling with them,” she said.
Kirsten Bridegan’s recounting of the day her husband was killed and all the trauma that she and her family has since endured comes in part out of frustration that the person responsible is still on the loose. “I want people to know the murderer is out there. The murderer is watching this. That is not OK,” she said.
