A televised American football game turned into a family tragedy. It happened in Florida, in Lakeland, a few days before Christmas. A man killed his wife, seriously injured his thirteen-year-old daughter and then took his own life.
According to what has been reconstructed, Crystal Kenney had asked her husband Jason Kenney to change the channel or turn off the TV while he was following Monday Night Football, during the game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Indianapolis Colts. The man, already visibly drunk, started arguing with his wife, then took a gun and shot her, killing her.
The blows to the children and the suicide
After hitting his wife, Kenney shot his 13-year-old daughter in the face and shoulder, seriously wounding her. The 12-year-old brother managed to escape and raise the alarm, while a third child, just one year old, was not involved.
The man then left the house and took his own life inside a shed on his deceased father’s old property, shooting himself. When the police arrived at the house, between Orlando and Tampa, they found the woman now dead and her daughter seriously injured, who was then taken to hospital.
The message and the investigations
During the inspection the officers found a desperate message written by the woman to her husband: «You drink and you’re back to doing cocaine. This is not the way a family should be. You need God.” It is not clear whether the message was written on the same evening as the tragedy. The man, according to authorities, had no criminal record.
«I don’t want to appear sinister – commented the county sheriff, Grady Judd – but the only right thing he did that evening was shoot himself. If he wasn’t well, he should have taken his own life without harming those beautiful people.”
The 13-year-old girl is not in danger of dying and her survival has been described by local media as a “Christmas miracle”. He told investigators: “I had begged him not to shoot me, I told him: don’t shoot me, don’t shoot me, and he shot me anyway.”