Florida mother of three killed by husband at NFL game ‘died a hero’

As a single mother, Crystal Rauer was fiercely protective of her children.

So when she starts dating a handsome man from church, Crystal doesn’t immediately introduce him. In fact, she waited until they had dated for a full year before meeting the kids.

“She took her time,” Crystal’s sister, Stephanie Rauer, told USA Today this week. “He had a glow of happiness I hadn’t seen in a long time … My sister trusted him and was in love with him. She finally found him happy.”

But on Dec. 22, two years after Crystal married Jason Kenney, he killed her and shot her 13-year-old daughter in the face at their Florida home — three days before Christmas — during an argument over watching a football game, according to the Polk County Sheriff’s Office. Kenny later shot himself.

The December holiday crime shocked the nation.

“The 13-year-old girl begged 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 Krystal’s family goes through grief and trauma, USA TODAY is telling her story and how she used her last moments to save her children.

Who was Crystal Roure?

From an early age, Crystal Rowre displayed ambition and a commitment to hard work.

Her sister Stephanie recalled how Crystal did well in school and quickly graduated from hostess to server after landing her first job at TGI Fridays as a teenager.

“What set her apart from the others was that she didn’t just work for the pay … she worked for the experience,” Stephanie said. “She worked for knowledge. She worked to prove herself to work and never give up.”

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

“She worked hard and long hours,” Stephanie said. “And somehow she was superwoman. She managed to hold down a full-time job and be a full-time mother.”

Although Krystal had to juggle work and children while single, she never missed a school function, award ceremony or field trip. “Because she was a smart woman,” Stephanie said, “she even managed to buy herself a house.”

“Her children were her world. She worked hard for them, to raise them. She protected them,” she said. “They came first.”

When Crystal Marries Kenny, ‘She Lost That Sparkle’

Early in the relationship, Facebook photos show the couple smiling and kissing each other in several selfies. Others show them and the kids as a picture-perfect family, posing in front of a Christmas tree and at a baseball game.

However, shortly after the wedding on November 4, 2023, Stephanie said: “My sister has lost her sparkle.”

At first, Stephanie changed the fact that Crystal became pregnant with her third child soon after marriage.

“I remember asking her, ‘Are you okay?'” Stephanie said. “She said, ‘Yeah,’ it was just that this pregnancy kicked her butt because she was so old.

Although Stephanie said she always had an “eh” feeling about Kenny, she thought her sister was happy and safe.

That is until she got the worst phone call of her life.

What happened to Crystal Rauer?

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

When Kenny went inside and wanted to continue watching the game, a fight broke out. 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 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: “You’re drinking, you’re using cocaine again. This is not how families should be. You need God.”

The 1-year-old daughter shared by the couple was safe. The 13-year-old girl survived the gunshot wound after the bullet hit the bridge of her nose and exited the top of her head, Judd said.

After shooting his wife and stepdaughter, Kenny drove to his late father’s house in his truck 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 down to a shed on his father’s property. When they called for him to come outside, they heard a single gunshot and found Kenny dead inside.

Judd said a relative told deputies that Kenney had been beating Crystal “for quite some time,” although the sheriff’s office has no records of any domestic violence calls or allegations. Jason Kenney had no criminal history, Judd said.

“He completely destroyed a family,” Judd said. “When you go in there, there’s a beautiful Christmas tree with Christmas presents under the tree, like a nuclear family should be … and it ends like this.”

How is Crystal’s family holding up?

Crystal’s family leans on each other as they absorb the grief of her murder and raise funds for the children. Crystal’s 13-year-old daughter is “doing great in her recovery” and “it’s really a miracle that the bullet missed all the major things,” Stephanie said.

As for any abuse leading up to the tragedy, Stephanie said it was possible but she wasn’t aware of any.

“After they got married I know she said she drank a lot but she said she was going to stop and she would help with that. Obviously that didn’t happen,” she said, adding that when she visited, Kenny would “be outside playing games on his phone and sitting in the shed smoking cigarettes.”

“If there was abuse going on he must have scared her to the point of not saying or doing anything because the person my sister was, she would have left at the first sight of trouble because she would have protected her children,” she said. “But that’s a question we’ll never have an answer to.”

Stephanie says she’s angry that Kenny killed her sister and tried to kill her niece, but she’s proud of Crystal and her nephew’s actions that night.

“My sister died a hero for getting my nephew out of the house to protect her children and 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 unharmed.”

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

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

This article originally appeared on USA Today: Florida mother of three killed by husband at NFL game ‘died a hero’