Coral Springs Vice Mayor Nancy Metayer Bowen was shot and killed Wednesday in an apparent domestic violence incident, according to information that sources initially gave Florida Politics off the record that the Coral Springs Police Department has since confirmed.
Her husband, Stephen Bowen, is a suspect. He is now in police custody after initially fleeing to Plantation, where he was apprehended at the Landmark Towers apartment complex.
Police responded to multiple gunshots, one source said.
“The Coral Springs Police Department is currently working a death investigation involving the City of Coral Springs Vice Mayor, Nancy Metayer Bowen. It is still an active investigation,” Coral Springs Police Sgt. Francis Capre said by email.
The Department will hold a press conference at Coral Springs City Hall at 5:45 p.m. on Wednesday in the Sawgrass Room.
An environmental scientist by trade, Metayer Bowen, a 38-year-old first-generation American, was a trailblazing public servant and community advocate who rose from working as an educator to serving as a standout elected official in Broward County.
She won her seat on the Coral Springs Commission in 2020, becoming the first Black and Haitian American woman elected to the panel. Four years later, she won re-election unopposed.
While serving in Coral Springs, she served on the city’s Affordable Housing Advisory Committee and Charter School Advisory Board, the Broward County Climate Change Task Force, and the Florida League of Cities’ Legislative Committee.
Metayer Bowen’s interest in politics was earnest and came early, and in recent years, she stood out as a rising star within the Democratic Party.
A graduate of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health with a master’s degree in environmental health sciences, according to her LinkedIn page, Metayer Bowen worked as a legal and outreach intern with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration before accepting internships with former U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson and ex-President Barack Obama’s administration.
She then worked for about two years on Haiti relief before taking a job with Broward County government as a Program Manager with the county’s Junior Sustainability Stewards Program. In June 2017, she was elected to the Broward Soil and Water Conservation District, where she served for about two years. During that time, she also held several roles with the now-defunct Florida New Majority advocacy group, which focused on expanding the state’s Democratic voting base.
After a short stint as a community engagement liaison for the city of Tamarac, Metayer Bowen held positions with environmental and nonprofit groups while also successfully seeking her seat on the Coral Springs Commission.
In 2024, she was tapped first by former President Joe Biden and later by former Vice President Kamala Harris to serve as their presidential campaigns’ Florida Caribbean Vote Director.
That same month, Metayer Bowen attracted positive attention as one of the first elected officials to publicly criticize Harris’ successor, Vice President JD Vance, for spreading lies that Haitian immigrants were eating pets in Ohio.
In March last year, the Florida Democratic Party named her its Vice Chair of Haitian American Voter Engagement.
A source told Florida Politics that Metayer Bowen was preparing to run for Congress this year.
Metayer Bowen celebrated her second wedding anniversary to Stephen Bower in a Nov. 22, 2024, Instagram post depicting the couple in front of the Coral Springs seal at City Hall.
“Two years with the amazing Stephen Bower,” she wrote. “Cheers to love, growth, and building a beautiful life together.”
The Metayer family has been beset by tragedy in the past year. In December, Metayer Bowen’s 26-year-old brother, Joshua, died by suicide after a years-long battle with schizophrenia. He was a survivor of the Feb. 14, 2018, mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
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This story is developing and will be updated.
