A 4-year-old girl walked barefoot through a still-dark Tamarac neighborhood early Sunday morning. She was following her father, who was dressed in all black with a 9 mm handgun, as he followed his estranged wife who was running from home to home.
Seraphine had already witnessed her father shoot and kill her maternal grandfather, David Ponzer, 64, as he drank his coffee just after 6 a.m. on his back patio in the 5800 block of North Plum Bay Parkway, a probable cause affidavit for Nathan Gingles’s arrest said.
Nathan Gingles, 43, then allegedly shot and killed his 34-year-old wife Mary Gingles and Andrew Ferrin, 36, an unsuspecting neighbor, inside of Ferrin’s home, according to the Broward Sheriff’s Office.
After the shootings, Seraphine was kidnapped and the subject of an Amber alert. Deputies found her with her father leaving a Walmart in North Lauderdale later that morning. Nathan Gingles was arrested there, accused in the three murders. A judge ordered he be held without bond Tuesday afternoon.
The Florida Department of Children and Families did not respond to an email seeking information about the girl’s status Tuesday. A judge ordered Nathan Gingles to have no direct or indirect contact with her.
On several occasions, Seraphine had told her mother that Nathan Gingles wanted her dead, Broward County court records show. And Mary Gingles said in a court petition in December that she expected he would try to before the end of February.
Domestic violence history
Court records show the Gingleses were in the process of divorcing. Mary Gingles in one petition for protection she filed in December 2024 documented pages of “the concerning things Nathan has done,” from October through December, including that he allegedly put a tracking device on her car.
She had previously reported to the Sheriff’s Office past incidents of alleged domestic violence, according to the December petition. The domestic violence history dated to at least 2022 in Germany, where Seraphine was born, according to a separate petition she filed on Feb. 9, 2024.
Seraphine on multiple occasions told her mother things that Nathan Gingles allegedly had said, according to the petitions. In mid-December, Mary Gingles was driving the girl to the Museum of Discovery and Science, talking about her favorite dinosaurs as they traveled.
“… She told me that she now likes dragons because daddy bought her dragon pets, and she noted, ‘he just wants to kill you but he buys me dragon pets.” I asked her to elaborate, and she said, ‘daddy just wants to make you die,’” Mary Gingles wrote in the December petition.
Nearly two weeks later, Mary Gingles and her husband exchanged custody of the girl in public. After Nathan Gingles left, Seraphine told her mother, “Daddy left me alone again. He is trying to make you die,” the petition said.
“This is not the first time she has told me that Nathan tells her he is going to kill me, or even graphically describes how he wants to kill me,” Mary Gingles wrote. “This is not surprising since he has told me, ‘If you ever leave me, I will kill you.’”
Mary Gingles listed seven different dates with alleged incidents of domestic violence, writing in the petition that she was in fear for her life.
She said in the petition that Nathan Gingles had guns with silencers.
“He has already taken steps to prepare to murder me, but is waiting for the opportune time,” she wrote. “I think it is likely that without a restraining order he will attempt this before the lease is up at the end of February.”
David Bennett, one of the neighbors on the block, said other neighbors had witnessed some time in the recent past law enforcement carrying several guns outside of the home where Mary Gingles had been living and taking inventory of them in the driveway.
“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,” Mary Gingles wrote.
Inside the home where Mary Gingles lived and where Ponzer was shot and killed, deputies found lockboxes for guns that had been opened and a domestic violence injunction with Nathan Gingles’s name on it lying on the kitchen table, the probable cause affidavit said. The injunction said he was not to have contact with either Mary Gingles or the little girl.
‘Trying to protect’
Ferrin’s uncle John David was in the home he shared with his nephew, asleep at the time of the shootings. He said 10 shell casings were found in his home, but he didn’t hear a single shot.
David said he isn’t sure whether Ferrin opened the door to let Mary Gingles inside, or if the door was unlocked and she ran in. But either way, David said he was certain his nephew was trying to protect her when he was shot and killed.
“Somebody he didn’t even know,” David told the Sun Sentinel. “Somebody he didn’t even know, he was trying to protect …”
Neighbors who called 911 heard a woman and child screaming and later, as many as nine gunshots, first responders’ radio communications archived by the streaming site Broadcastify show.
David said deputies handcuffed him in his home but would not at first tell him what happened. He didn’t see either his nephew or Mary Gingles inside the home.
He believes more should have been done to protect Mary Gingles, given she had filed multiple petitions for protection and alleged violations of those.
“Why was he not arrested? Why was he not arrested until he showed up and killed three people? That’s my biggest question,” he said.
David and Amanda Camacho, a long-time and close friend of Ferrin’s, told the Sun Sentinel Ferrin was a natural care giver with an entrepreneurial spirit, someone who was doted on by his family and who inspired the people in his life to be the best version of themselves.
“I just want people to know that he existed and that he mattered and that he mattered to so many people. And that he had so much potential that was wasted by this senseless act,” Camacho said. “And it’s a shame that we didn’t get to see how much we would have shined because he still had so much more light and so much more kindness to give.”
David said Ferrin was to him a nephew, son and best friend in one. Ferrin was for more than a decade the baby of the family and David’s first nephew, he said. He described him as a “beacon of light” who acted often as the “mother hen” for those he loved in his life, including his uncle. Ferrin contributed to their home, cooking and cleaning, and they shared routines together — weekly pizza or taco nights for dinner, watching their favorite shows together.
“He was our baby. He was like the family’s baby,” David said. “He was the community-raised child that everybody loved to death. And that’s what made him special to all of us … He was our everything.”
David said he doesn’t plan to return back to the home they shared together.
“I lost my nephew and house in a day. I can never go back to that house again … I can’t live there anymore,” he said.
Held without bond
Nathan Gingles was ordered held without bond Tuesday afternoon by Broward Judge Corey B. Friedman.
The State Attorney’s Office contended Nathan Giles was at risk of fleeing. He had allegedly made a statement in front of his daughter about leaving Florida to go to Texas, the State Attorney’s Office’s representative said at the hearing.
He had been living at an apartment in Lauderhill at least since December 2024, according to the petition Mary Gingles filed. Court records show he is from Texas, and the tag of his car listed in the Amber alert was from Texas.
He is held in the Main Jail. In total, he faces three counts of first-degree murder, two counts of armed burglary, one count of child abuse, one count of child neglect and one count of armed kidnapping.