The gun allegedly used by Nathan Gingles in the Feb. 16 shootings of his estranged wife, his father-in-law and an uninvolved neighbor was one he owned and had previously surrendered to authorities — and would not have had access to had he surrendered it in December as he was ordered, newly released records show.
A day after Gingles was arrested in connection with the shooting deaths of his soon-to-be ex-wife Mary Gingles, her father David Ponzer and a neighbor Andrew Ferrin, the Broward Sheriff’s Office Dive Team recovered a black Sig Sauer P320 with a suppressor attached from a canal in the Tamarac neighborhood where they were killed, a probable cause affidavit said.
Both were among the many items deputies took from him nearly exactly a year earlier after Mary Gingles first received a restraining order against him, records obtained Tuesday by the South Florida Sun Sentinel show.
Records released in response to public records requests Tuesday and Wednesday give more detail into the information Mary Gingles reported to authorities before the shootings during numerous calls. Deputies were called at least 14 times dating back to early last year, sometimes multiple times in a day.
Guns previously surrendered
The Sig Sauer P320 recovered from the canal was one of more than a dozen guns and rifles, including an AR-15, that Gingles had surrendered on Feb. 9, 2024. He also surrendered sight mounts, multiple suppressors and box after box full of ammunition, 660 rounds in all, one of the reports released by the Sheriff’s Office shows.
The weapons and ammunition had been returned to Gingles by September, after his wife’s temporary injunction had been dismissed because they agreed to a no contact order. The Sheriff’s Office was legally required to return the weapons, Sheriff Gregory Tony said at a news conference after the shootings.
But Gingles was required this past December to surrender it all once again, after his wife received a second temporary restraining order. Tony said that his deputies did not collect any of Gingles’ weapons after that second restraining order.
The injunction was still in place when Gingles showed up armed at his wife’s home in the 5800 block of North Plum Bay Parkway early in the morning on Feb. 16 and allegedly first shot Ponzer as he drank coffee on the patio, a probable cause affidavit said. Mary Gingles then ran for help, banging on neighbors’ doors. She managed to enter one neighbor’s home, where both she and Ferrin were shot and killed, the affidavit said. All three shootings happened in front of the Gingleses’ 4-year-old daughter, Seraphine.
Why Gingles’ weapons were not surrendered in December is one aspect of what Tony said is under review since the shootings.
“I want to know why didn’t we do it?” Tony said at the news conference of Gingles’ access to guns. “Who was the detective assigned? Did they file the proper paperwork with the court? These are all the processes that we’re looking at.”
Eight deputies have been suspended and the Tamarac district’s captain was demoted as Tony reviews what he described as “shortcomings” when it came to handling the case over the course of several months before the shootings and its response on Feb. 16.
‘Seemed to be rational’
Mary Gingles’ Feb. 9 restraining order led to a Department of Children and Families investigation. The deputy who assisted with the investigation wrote in a report released Wednesday that there was no evidence of child abuse or neglect.
Mary Gingles wrote in her petition that Seraphine had witnessed Nathan Gingles’ abusive behaviors and that he would leave out crushed Adderall in the home. He would “do something to intimidate and terrorize Sera” every weekend and intentionally scare her, the petition said.
One day while Seraphine and her mother were playing with dinosaurs, Nathan Gingles “started stomping around,” which scared the girl and she ran to her mom. He went into the kitchen and started singing “that he was going to shoot me and there was nothing I could do about it.”
A BSO deputy met with the DCF investigator at the home on Feb. 10, one day after Mary Gingles was granted the restraining order and Nathan Gingles’ guns were taken from him.
The DCF investigator said Nathan Gingles “seemed to be rational,” that he was prescribed Adderall and that when he stomped around the house, “it turns out that their daughter likes dinosaurs and (he) acts like a big dinosaur.”
Nathan Gingles told the DCF investigator that his wife was severely depressed, would leave Seraphine in diapers “all day” and was an unfit parent. He said that she carried a concealed gun, was a danger to herself and Seraphine, had previously had a “psychotic break” in 2018, and had “threatened the father by pointing a loaded weapon at him” in 2020, according to the DCF report, which is coped verbatim in the BSO report released Wednesday.
Mary Gingles told the deputy and DCF investigator she was not depressed and had anxiety because of her husband’s behaviors, according to the report. Seraphine had no signs of diaper rashes or wearing dirty diapers. The home was clean and stocked with food.
Nathan Gingles had claimed that she “abducted” their daughter two days earlier. Mary Gingles said she had taken her to the park to get away from him, the report said.
She had no weapons at their home and denied that she ever pointed a gun at Nathan Gingles in 2020, stating that the couple lived in Germany then, according to the BSO report.
Tracking device reported
Mary Gingles found a tracking device on her car and proof that Nathan Gingles bought it and called the Tamarac District office to report it. One of the eight deputies suspended is Raul Ortiz, who she tried to follow up with after she filed the report but who never answered her.
The redacted incident report noted that Mary Gingles’ earlier restraining order had been dismissed by then but did not note that they had agreed to a no contact order in July. She was given a case number.
“I have the statement where Nathan has purchased something from (the tracking company) and I have a court order specifying that he nor I will stalk nor harass the other person,” she wrote in her petition for the restraining order. “Recently, another sheriff suggested I call again and ask what it will take to reopen the case, so I will follow up again after submitting this injunction.”
Ortiz’s employee records released Wednesday show he has not before been the subject of an Internal Affairs investigation.
December violations
Mary Gingles said she feared her husband would try to kill her before the end of this February and seemed unaware that his guns had been returned to him by then. She wrote he had violated their no contact order by coming into her home on Dec. 27, when he left a backpack of eerie supplies and a note about air embolisms, according to the petition.
“I do not know if he has gotten his previously owned guns with silencers back from BSO yet, but if he hasn’t, that would explain why he is telling our daughter specifically that he wants to stab me, and making notes of air embolisms, as these are all easily obtainable means to kill me without his weapons,” she wrote on Dec. 30.
One aspect Tony said is also under review is the handling of a call from Dec. 29, one day before Mary Gingles was granted the second restraining order and two days after Nathan Gingles had entered her home in violation of the no contact order, records show.
Mary Gingles told a deputy who responded to her home on Dec. 29 that her husband “sometimes comes and goes into the house whenever she is not there and that he is not supposed to be doing that while the divorce proceedings are still in motion,” a redacted incident report released Tuesday shows.
Tony said Mary gave the deputy “robust” information for more than 30 minutes during the call and that they possibly could have tried to arrest Gingles then but did not.
“At that time based on the evidence and things that were presented, there was enough there where we could have potentially pursued for a probable cause affidavit so we can arrest him and take him off the street, and that didn’t happen,” Tony said.
Mary Gingles’ called the Sheriff’s Office the next day. She noticed her car key was missing and believed Nathan Gingles stole it, she wrote in her petition. She had cameras, but the key hook was out of their frame.
The deputy who came to her home on Dec. 30 wrote in an incident report that Mary Gingles last saw the key the day before Nathan Gingles entered their home in violation of the order and had only just noticed it missing. The report noted that, “per mediation that he is not to go to their home unless is to pick up their daughter” and that she had reported him going into the home the previous day, along with that report’s case number.
The deputy completed a “lost property report,” given that “she did not witness nor has any evidence that anybody took her key fob,” according to the incident report.
“It should be noted that none of the doors or windows to her home had any signs of forced entry to them,” the report said.
Three of the eight deputies who are on administrative leave are named in the report from the Dec. 29 call that Tony singled out as one shortcoming: Deputy Daniel Munoz, 29, with 5 years of service; Deputy Brittney King, 29, with 5 years of service; and Sgt. Travis Allen, 45, with 18 years of service.
Munoz was under an Internal Affairs investigation in 2021 for allegations of “discretion” and conduct unbecoming, employee records show. He was given a written reprimand. Further details were not available in the record released Wednesday.
King has not been under an Internal Affairs investigation before. Allen has been the subject of five Internal Affairs investigations from 2015 through 2011, his employee history record shows, for technological communications, a “non-contact shooting,” special detail employment and twice for a complaint of not appearing.
Nathan Gingles was denied bond and remains in the Broward Main Jail. He faces murder, kidnapping, child abuse and neglect and burglary charges.
