As a single mother, Crystal Roure was extremely protective of her children.
So when she started dating a handsome man from church, Crystal didn’t introduce him right away. In fact, she waited until they had been dating for a full year before he met the kids.
“He took his time,” Crystal’s sister, Stephanie Roure, told USA TODAY this week. “He had a happy glow that I haven’t seen in a long time… My sister trusted him and fell in love with him. He finally found her happily ever after.”
But on Dec. 22, just two years after Crystal married Jason Kenney, he would kill her and shoot her 13-year-old daughter in the face in their Florida home — all over an argument about watching a football game three days before Christmas, according to the Polk County Sheriff’s Office. Kenney later shot himself.
The December holiday killing shocked the nation.
“13-year-old girl begged not to be shot – “Please don’t shoot me. Please don’t shoot me,” Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said at a news conference the week of the attack. “And he shot her twice.”
Now, as Crystal’s family feels grief and shock, USA TODAY is telling her story and how she used her last moments in life to save her children.
Crystal Roure (bottom left) is pictured with Santa Claus, her three children, her mother Debbie Bailey (left), her sister Stephanie Roure (right) and her sister-in-law Sandra Bartlett (second from left in back) on December 11, 2025, 11 days before Crystal Roure’s husband fatally shot her just before Christmas.
Who was Crystal Roure?
From a young age, Crystal Roure showed ambition and a commitment to hard work.
Her sister Stephanie recalled that Crystal did well in school and thrived when she got her first job at TGI Friday’s as a teenager, quickly graduating from hostess to server.
“What set her apart from the others was that she didn’t just work for a paycheck…she worked for the experience,” Stephanie said. “She worked for knowledge. She worked to prove to herself that she was capable of doing things and not giving up.”
But when she became a mother at 25, “everything she did from that moment on was for her children.”
“He worked harder and harder,” Stephanie said. “And somehow she was a superwoman. She managed to hold down a full-time job and be a full-time mom.”
Although Crystal had to juggle work and children while single, she didn’t miss a school function, award ceremony or trip. She was also able to buy a house on her own, “because she was a smart woman,” Stephanie said.
“Her children were her world. She worked hard for them, to provide for them. She protected them,” she said. “They came first before anything else.”
Crystal Roure is photographed.
When Crystal married Kenney, she ‘lost her sparkle’
Early in the relationship, photos on Facebook show the pair smiling and kissing in many selfies. Others show them and the kids looking like a perfect family, posing in front of a Christmas tree and at a baseball game.
But some time after they tied the knot on November 4, 2023, Stephanie said: “My sister has lost her sparkle.”
At first, Stephanie attributed the change to the fact that Crystal became pregnant with their third child fairly quickly after the wedding.
“I remember asking her, ‘Are you okay?'” Stephanie said. “She said, ‘Yes,’ but this pregnancy was really kicking her ass because she was so much older.”
Although Stephanie said she always had an “ehh” feeling about Kenney, she thought her sister was happy and safe.
That is until she got the worst phone call of her life.
Crystal Roure is photographed.
What happened to Crystal Roure?
Crystal and her three children spent the evening of December 22 by the Christmas tree at their home in Highland City, just east of Tampa. Meanwhile, Kenney was in his shed drinking and watching Monday night football until about 11 p.m., Sheriff Judd said.
When Kenney entered the house and wanted to continue watching the game, an argument ensued. It got so scary that Crystal told her 12-year-old son to run to a neighbor’s house and call 911, Judd said.
As the boy ran outside, he heard the first shot. Responding deputies found Crystal dead inside, her 13-year-old daughter shot in the face and shoulder, and Jason Kenney missing. They also found a letter Crystal had written to her husband saying: “Drinking, you’re doing cocaine again. This is not how family should be. You need God.”
The couple’s 1-year-old daughter was unharmed. The 13-year-old girl survived the gunshot wound after the bullet hit the bridge of her nose and deflected through the top of her head, Judd said.
After shooting his wife and stepdaughter, Kenney drove the truck to his father’s house and called his sister to say he had “done something very, very bad” and that it was the last time they would ever speak, Judd said.
Deputies tracked Kenney to a shed on his father’s property. When they called him out, they heard a single gunshot and found Kenney dead inside.
Judd said a relative told deputies that Kenney had been beating Crystal “for some time,” although the sheriff’s office has no records of domestic violence calls or allegations. Jason Kenney had no criminal record, Judd said.
“It absolutely destroyed a family,” Judd said. “When you go in there, there’s a beautiful Christmas tree with lots of Christmas presents under the tree, just like the nuclear family should be … and it ends like this.”
Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd holds a photo with Jason Kenney during a news conference on Dec. 23, 2025.
How is Crystal’s family holding up?
Crystal’s family leans on each other as they absorb the shock of her murder and raise funds for the children. His 13-year-old daughter Crystal is “doing well” and “it’s really a miracle that the bullet missed anything important,” Stephanie said.
As for any abuse that led to the tragedy, Stephanie said it was possible, but she wasn’t aware of any.
“After they got married, I know she said she was drinking a lot more, but she said she was going to stop and she said she was going to get help for it. Obviously that didn’t happen,” she said, adding that when she would visit, Kenney “was sitting outside in the shed playing his phone games and smoking his cigarettes.”
“If abuse happened, he must have scared her to the point of not saying or doing anything because the type of person my sister was would have left her at first sight because she would protect her children,” she said. “But that’s a question we’ll never have the answers to.”
Stephanie said she is upset that Kenney killed her sister and tried to kill her niece, but that she is so proud of Crystal and her nephew’s actions that night.
“My sister died a hero because she protected her children and got my nephew out of the house to call 911,” she said. “She did that. She saved their lives, and by doing that, my nephew saved his sister’s life, and thank God the baby was untouched.”
Stephanie said she will do her best to teach her 1-year-old granddaughter about who her mother was.
“I will never let these children forget the love, strength and courage he had for them,” she said. “They will always know he loved them and put them first.”
Crystal Roure is pictured with her three children.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Florida mother of three killed by husband after NFL game ‘died a hero’