Police say the city’s vice mayor was killed inside her home, and her husband now faces murder and evidence tampering charges.
CORAL SPRINGS, Fla. — The killing of Coral Springs Vice Mayor Nancy Metayer Bowen has shaken City Hall, the local Haitian community and Florida Democrats, turning the sudden absence of a well-known public official into a murder case that now centers on her husband.
Nancy Metayer Bowen was not only a city commissioner. She was also a vice mayor, an environmental scientist and a political figure whose rise carried deep symbolic weight in Coral Springs. Police say that public life came to a violent end overnight March 31, and that Stephen Bowen, 40, now faces first-degree murder and evidence tampering charges. The immediate stakes are both legal and civic: prosecutors must prove a premeditated killing, while the city and party organizations she helped lead are trying to absorb the loss of a colleague whose death came without warning.
Metayer Bowen’s standing in Coral Springs helps explain why her disappearance drew attention so quickly. City records say she was elected to the commission in 2020, reelected in 2024 and appointed vice mayor in December 2024. The city describes her as the first Black and Haitian American woman elected to the commission. Her biography says she built a career around environmental justice, public health and disaster response and brought that work into local government. Those who worked with her painted a picture of a disciplined official who was active, visible and deeply tied to the city’s civic life. So when she failed to appear for city business on the morning of April 1, colleagues did not treat it as routine.
Police said concern about her well-being began after she missed scheduled meetings Wednesday morning. Calls and text messages went unanswered. Officers went to the couple’s house on Northwest 127th Avenue at about 10:20 a.m. for a welfare check, but no one came to the door and no vehicles were in the driveway. A neighbor later told police she had seen Metayer Bowen walking her dog around midnight. Investigators then noticed damage near the second floor of the house that they believed was consistent with projectile force. As detectives kept working, the search for an explanation spread beyond the home. They found Stephen Bowen’s pickup in Plantation and began watching him there.
The break in the case came through family, according to the arrest affidavit. Police said Bowen’s uncle called 911 and reported that Bowen had come to his home and confessed that his wife was dead. Investigators say Bowen told the uncle he had shot her three times with a shotgun, used a pillow to muffle the sound and then went downstairs to sleep. When asked why, the affidavit says he replied that he “couldn’t take it anymore.” Officers then entered the home and found Metayer Bowen dead in a second-floor bedroom. Police said her body was wrapped in blankets and garbage bags, and that detectives found spent shotgun shells and a pillow marked by burns. Bowen was arrested later that afternoon in Plantation and later ordered held without bond.
The reaction was immediate and deeply personal. In a public statement, Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried called Metayer Bowen a scientist, environmentalist and “barrier-breaker” whose work and friendship touched many people in the party. The city later rewrote her official biography page into a memorial, saying she died April 1 and left behind a legacy of service, compassion and leadership. Public grief was tied not only to the violence of the allegations but also to the abrupt interruption of a life that had become closely woven into local government. At 38, she was young, visible and still building her political future.
Even with a dramatic affidavit, important gaps remain. Police have not publicly offered a fuller account of motive beyond the statement they say Bowen made to his uncle. Court records available in the first days of the case did not spell out what happened in the home before the shooting or whether there had been a recent argument. The city also pushed back after some reporting linked earlier calls for service at the home to domestic violence. In a later statement, officials said some published accounts were inaccurate and misleading on that point. That response narrowed the verified public record: investigators have alleged a premeditated domestic killing, but not every claim circulating after the arrest has been confirmed.
The prosecution now moves into the slower, more formal stage that follows an arrest. Stephen Bowen was booked into Broward County jail on charges of first-degree premeditated murder and tampering with or fabricating physical evidence. A judge found probable cause and denied bond at first appearance. The case will next turn on charging decisions, discovery and court scheduling in Broward County, while Coral Springs faces a separate question that criminal court cannot answer: how a public servant whose work centered on care, resilience and community was killed inside her own home.
For now, the official facts are stark. Nancy Metayer Bowen is dead, her husband is jailed, and a city that knew her in public is left piecing together the private violence police say ended her life. The next milestone is the continued court process against Stephen Bowen.
Author note: Last updated April 23, 2026.