Coral Springs Vice Mayor Found Dead at Home, Husband in Custody

Nancy Metayer Bowen had been scheduled to announce a run for Congress on Thursday morning. Instead, officers conducting a wellness check found her dead at her Coral Springs home Wednesday, and her husband, Stephen Bowen, was taken into police custody.

Police were called to the 800 block of Northwest 127th Avenue around 10 a.m. after Metayer Bowen, 38, missed both a Coral Springs City Commission meeting and a charter school board of directors meeting. Coral Springs Police Chief Brad Mock described the case at a Wednesday evening news conference as a domestic violence incident, though he did not publicly confirm the cause of death, saying more information would follow. Multiple sources said she was shot. Mock confirmed there are no additional suspects and no public safety threat, and thanked the Broward Sheriff's Office, the Fort Lauderdale Police Department, and the Plantation Police Department for their assistance.

Metayer Bowen had made history in 2020 as the first Black and Haitian-American woman elected to the Coral Springs City Commission, representing a Broward County city of roughly 140,000 residents about 13 miles from Fort Lauderdale. She won re-election unopposed in 2024, and fellow commissioners appointed her to a second consecutive one-year term as vice mayor that November.

A first-generation Haitian American and environmental scientist by training, she earned a Bachelor of Science from Florida A&M University and a Master of Health Science from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Early in her career she interned with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and with the offices of former Sen. Bill Nelson and President Barack Obama. As a member of the Broward County Soil and Water Conservation District, she helped coordinate responses to Hurricanes Irma, Michael, and Dorian.

Her political trajectory had sharpened considerably. She served as Florida Caribbean Vote Director for both the Biden and Harris presidential campaigns in 2024 and was named Vice Chair of Haitian American Voter Engagement for the Florida Democratic Party in March 2025. People familiar with her plans said she was poised to formally enter the Democratic primary for the congressional seat held by Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick. Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) posted on X: "I'm in shock. I was just with her on Saturday. She just buried her brother. She was about to announce she was running for Congress."

Her brother, Joshua, 26, a survivor of the February 14, 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, died by suicide in December 2025 after a years-long struggle with schizophrenia.

Coral Springs City Manager Catherine Givens said calling Wednesday "a very dark day for us in Coral Springs is an understatement," adding there are "no words that can truly capture the depth of this loss or the pain." Commissioner Joshua Simmons called Metayer Bowen his "battle buddy" and said the city government was now "incomplete." Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried, who had embraced Metayer Bowen at the party's Leadership Summit just two weeks earlier, mourned "the sudden and horrific death of our beloved Vice Chair." House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell called her loss "a shock that reverberates throughout our entire state."

Her family said in a statement posted to Instagram: "Her legacy will live on not only in the policies she helped shape, but in the countless lives she touched."

The commission will face immediate questions about leadership continuity as the investigation proceeds. With Metayer Bowen's seat now vacant and a vice mayoral role to fill, city officials said they were taking steps to help employees grieve.

Florida consistently ranks among states with the highest rates of domestic violence, and advocates note that many incidents go unreported due to fear or coercion. Warning signs in intimate partner relationships, including isolation, controlling behavior, and escalating conflict, often precede fatal violence, yet intervention resources remain underutilized. Anyone experiencing intimate partner violence can reach the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, or by texting START to 88788. The Florida Domestic Violence Hotline is available at 1-800-500-1119. In Broward County, the State Attorney's Office domestic violence unit can be reached at 954-831-7693.