Shanna Gardner has been indicted in the ambush death of her ex-husband Jared Bridegan, which occurred in Jacksonville Beach in February of 2022. It’s hard to wrap my head around someone conspiring to do such an awful thing, especially when you knew them as a baker who went out of their way to deliver a custom birthday cake to your house.

A quick recap of the story if you aren’t aware:

Shanna and Jared had an ugly divorce. They both remarried, and shared custody of their twins. Jared was dropping off the twins and heading home with his 2-year-old daughter and stopped because of a tire in the road.

While he was moving the tire, and with the 2-year-old still in her car seat, he was gunned down in the street. The girl was unharmed, and nothing was stolen, which made the whole thing extra suspicious.

Shanna’s new husband Mario Saldana was arrested first on charges of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, solicitation to commit a capital felony and child abuse, and now Shanna has been arrested on many of the same charges.

Cakes and Murder

My best friend Meisha always loved supporting local small businesses. She would go out of her way to find unique gifts and one year she had a very cool surfer themed birthday cake made for my husband by Beach Baked 904, which was run by Shanna. Since we both lived at the beach, Shanna personally delivered the cake herself.

This whole story is one of those things that make me miss Meisha even more (she passed away a couple years ago) because we would be having an absolute field day gossiping about this case and our crazy cake connection! And Meisha would also do this thing when she had too much to drink and start yelling “Murder!” and for once she’d actually have a legit reason to do that now.

The cake itself when actually really good! It was chocolate and white cream with a surfboard and crumbles that looked like sand. Shanna is a talented baker who obviously made some very, very, terrible decisions.

The whole thing is a very sad tragedy for everyone involved, and I don’t mean to make light of it by talking about the cake. But I can’t see the news story without thinking of it, so I had to share!

Click here to read more details of the crime story on Jacksonville Times