POLK COUNTY, Fla. – A domestic dispute over a football game turned into a deadly tragedy just three days before Christmas, leaving a mother dead and a teenage girl critically injured in Highland City.
Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd briefed the media on Tuesday regarding the overnight murder-suicide, which began late Monday evening. According to investigators, 47-year-old Jason Kenny had been drinking and watching the San Francisco 49ers game when an argument broke out with his wife, Crystal Kenny, around 11:00 p.m.
The dispute reportedly escalated when Crystal suggested changing the television channel.
As the situation heated up, Crystal told her 12-year-old son to run to a neighbor’s house and call 911. As the boy fled the home to get help, he heard the first gunshot.
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Deputies arrived at the scene within five minutes, but they found a horrific scene inside. Crystal had been shot in the head and killed. In a bedroom, deputies found her 13-year-old daughter suffering from two gunshot wounds—one to the shoulder and one to the face.
Sheriff Judd called the girl’s survival a “Christmas miracle,” noting that the bullet struck the bridge of her nose and traveled upward, exiting the top of her head without killing her. She remains in critical but stable condition at Lakeland Regional Health and is alert.
“She said, ‘I beg you, don’t shoot me. Don’t shoot me.’ And he shot her anyway,” Judd told reporters.
A one-year-old biological child of the couple was found unharmed in a crib.
Following the shooting, Kenny fled the scene in his vehicle, driving toward Lake Wales. During the drive, he reportedly called his sister in Upstate New York and confessed to the crime, stating he had done something “very bad” and refused to go to jail.
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Deputies tracked Kenny to his deceased father’s property in Lake Wales. When they set up a perimeter around a shed where Kenny had barricaded himself, they heard a single gunshot. A SWAT team made entry and found Kenny deceased from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Investigators discovered a note in the home, written by Crystal at an unknown time, pleading with her husband to stop using cocaine and alcohol and to find God. While police had no prior records of domestic violence calls to the home, family members later told detectives that abuse had been ongoing.
Sheriff Judd noted the heartbreaking contrast of the crime scene, describing a beautifully decorated Christmas tree with wrapped presents sitting just feet away from where the violence occurred.
“Quite frankly, I don’t want to sound sinister, but the only thing he did right that night was shoot himself,” Judd said. “He absolutely destroyed the family… three days before Christmas.”
The three surviving children have been placed in the custody of their grandparents.
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