Florida mom of three killed by husband over NFL game ‘died a hero’

As a single mother, Crystal Roure was extremely protective of her children.

So when she started dating a handsome guy from church, Crystal didn’t introduce him right away. In fact, she had waited a full year for them to date before meeting the boys.

“It took its time,” Crystal’s sister, Stephanie Roure, told USA TODAY this week. “He had a happier glow than I’ve seen in a long time… My sister trusted him and fell in love with him. In the end, she found him happily ever after.”

But on Dec. 22, just two years after Crystal married Jason Kenney, during an argument about watching a football game three days before Christmas, Crystal would kill him and shoot his 13-year-old daughter in the face at their Florida home, according to the Polk County Sheriff’s Office. Kenney then fatally shot himself.

Crime during the December holidays shocked the country.

“The 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 reels from grief and shock, USA TODAY tells her story and how she used her last moments alive to save her children.

Who was Crystal Roure?

From an early age, Crystal Roure demonstrated ambition and a commitment to hard work.

Her sister, Stephanie, recalled how well Crystal did in school and how she excelled when she landed her first job at TGI Friday’s as a teenager and quickly graduated from hostess to server.

“What set him apart was that he worked for the experience, not just for the paycheck,” Stephanie said. “He studied for knowledge. He studied to prove to himself that he could achieve things and that he did not give up.”

But when she became a mother at 25, “everything she did from then on was for her children.”

“He worked harder and longer,” Stephanie said. “And somehow she was superwoman. She managed to work a full-time job and be a full-time mom.”

Even though Crystal had to balance work and kids during her time single, she never missed a school event, awards ceremony, or field trip. Stephanie also said she managed to buy a house on her own “because she’s a smart woman.”

“His children were his world. He worked hard for them, to provide for them. He protected them,” he said. “They came before anything else.”

Crystal ‘lost that sparkle’ when she married Kenney

Early in the relationship, Facebook photos show the couple smiling and kissing each other in many selfies. Others show them and their kids looking like the perfect family, posing in front of a Christmas tree and at a baseball game.

But some time after they got married on November 4, 2023, Stephanie said: “My sister lost the sparkle she had.”

At first, Stephanie attributed this change to Crystal becoming pregnant with her third child right after the wedding.

“I asked him, ‘Are you okay?'” Stephanie said. “I remember asking,” he said. “She said ‘yes’, but this pregnancy was really hitting her hard 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.

Until he gets the worst phone call of his life.

What happened to Crystal Roure?

Crystal and her three children spent the evening of Dec. 22 by the Christmas tree at their home in Highland City, just east of Tampa. Sheriff Judd said Kenney, meanwhile, was drinking in his shed and watching Monday Night Football until 11 p.m.

A fight broke out when Kenney entered the house and wanted to continue watching the game. Judd said it became so scary that Crystal told her 12-year-old son to run to a neighbor’s house and call 911.

When the boy ran outside, he heard the first gunshot. Responding deputies found Crystal dead inside, her 13-year-old daughter shot in the face and shoulder, and Jason Kenney gone. They also found a letter Crystal wrote to her husband, telling him: “You’re drinking, you’re doing cocaine again. This isn’t the way your family should be. You need God.”

The 1-year-old daughter the couple shares was uninjured. Judd said the 13-year-old boy survived the gunshot wound he received when the bullet hit the bridge of his nose and deflected off the top of his head.

Judd said that after shooting his wife and stepdaughter, Kenney drove his truck to his late father’s house and called his sister, telling her he had “done something very, very bad” and that this would be the last time they would talk.

Deputies tracked Kenney to a shed on his father’s property. When they called for him to come out, they heard a single gunshot and found Kenney dead inside.

Judd said a relative told deputies that Kenney had been beating Crystal “for a while,” but the sheriff’s office had no record of domestic violence calls or charges. Jason Kenney has no criminal history, Judd said.

“It absolutely destroyed a family,” Judd said. “When you walk in there, you see a beautiful Christmas tree with lots of Christmas presents under the tree, just like a nuclear family should be… and that’s how it ends.”

How is Crystal’s family holding up?

Crystal’s family leans on each other as they recover from the shock of the murder and raise money for children. Stephanie said Crystal’s 13-year-old daughter “is doing well in her recovery” and that “it’s truly a miracle that the bullet missed all the important things.”

As for any abuse leading to the tragedy, Stephanie said it was possible but she was unaware of anything.

“I know that after they got married, he said he drank a lot more, but he said he was going to stop drinking and get help with that. Obviously that didn’t happen,” she said, adding that when she visited, Kenney would “sit outside at the booth and play games on his phone and smoke.”

“If it was abuse, it must have scared him enough to not say or do anything because my sister was the type of person who would abandon him at the first sight of trouble because she would protect her children,” he said. “But that’s a question we’ll never know the answer to.”

Stephanie said she was angry that Kenney killed her sister and tried to kill her nephew, but was proud of Crystal and her nephew’s actions that night.

“My sister died a hero for protecting her children and getting my nephew out of the house to call 911,” he said. “He did that. He saved their lives, and my niece saved her sister’s life by doing that, and thank God the baby was untouched.”

Stephanie said she will do her best to teach her 1-year-old niece all about who her mother is.

“I will never let these children forget the love, strength and courage he had for them,” he said. “They will always know that you loved them and put them first.”

This article first appeared on USA TODAY: Mother of three killed by husband over NFL game in Florida ‘died a hero’