Christmas Horror in Polk: Family Shattered by Deadly Domestic Shooting

Paul Riverbank, 12/26/2025Holiday turns tragic: a Polk County family shattered by domestic violence and devastating loss.

The transformation, when it came, was abrupt. What started as a spat about a football game—the kind of argument you might hear muffled behind any number of suburban doors—unspooled into unthinkable violence before midnight. Inside, Jason Kenney, flushed and sullen, glued himself to the TV set. Sometime during the San Francisco-Indianapolis matchup he sank too deeply into drinking; those who knew him might have seen it before but rarely imagined how far he’d go.

Crystal’s patience, by then brittle, finally snapped. She told her son, just 12 and eyes wide with dread, to sprint for help. The boy did as told—his sneakers thudding down the front steps—and in the awful seconds that followed, gunshots echoed through the walls. That is the kind of sound that divides life into ‘before’ and ‘after.’

Deputies arrived fast, but not fast enough. What they discovered inside has haunted even the veteran responders. Christmas lights flickered, still cheerful, on walls now marked by tragedy. Crystal Kenney, 42, was dead on the living room floor. Her daughter, 13, bleeding and terrified, had somehow survived—clutching her shoulder where a bullet had ripped through flesh and grazed her face. In a back bedroom, the youngest, just a year old, slept on in her crib, blissfully untouched by the horror. “A Christmas miracle,” Sheriff Grady Judd would later call it, his usual composure wearing thin.

Every corner of the Kenney house held reminders of ordinary family hopes: presents stacked in careful piles, a handwritten list of chores taped to the fridge, half-eaten cookies. It is those details that strike hardest—a home painstakingly shaped for comfort, now marred by sudden loss.

Afterwards, Jason didn’t linger. He left, dialing his sister from the road to admit what he could barely grasp himself: “I did something very, very bad.” His words, relayed through panicked family, were the first anyone outside the home heard of the carnage. Not long after, deputies tracked him to his father’s shed. He locked himself inside, and amid the scrapyard shabbiness, he ended his own life as the law closed in.

There were signs, in hindsight. A note, found later among Crystal’s things, laid it bare in her own hand: he was back on cocaine, back to a bottle, and she pleaded for change he never made. “You need God,” she had written—words meant to save, lost in the fog of that night.

Crystal’s children, now left to grandparents’ care, face an uncertain Christmas. The dazzling tree and unopened gifts serve as faint, cruel reminders of how quickly a year—or a family—can unravel. When spoken to by detectives, the 13-year-old managed, with remarkable defiance, to say only: “I begged him, don’t shoot me,” before he fired anyway. It’s hard to imagine what she’ll carry from those moments, or what the youngest will come to understand as the years go by.

Sheriff Judd doesn’t often stumble for words, but he did this time. The investigators are shaken, and so is much of Polk County. Family friends circle the wagons, casseroles and condolences arriving in a steady trickle. Neighbors leave lanterns on late. It’s small comfort, this sense of community when the lights inside one house have gone out so thoroughly.

The shock will fade for some. But not for those who survived and not for those who responded. The Christmas tree, heavy with ornaments, will come down soon—but the memory of that night will persist, tangled in the branches for a long time yet.

It was one of those winter mornings in Polk County when nobody expects life to turn on its heel. Outside, lawns glittered under the low December sun, neighbors shuffled about final holiday errands, and Jason and Crystal Kenney’s home looked, from the street, much like all the others—complete with the obligatory Christmas wreath, stockings dangling above a living room thick with expectation.The transformation, when it came, was abrupt. What started as a spat about a football game—the kind of argument you might hear muffled behind any number of suburban doors—unspooled into unthinkable violence before midnight. Inside, Jason Kenney, flushed and sullen, glued himself to the TV set. Sometime during the San Francisco-Indianapolis matchup he sank too deeply into drinking; those who knew him might have seen it before but rarely imagined how far he’d go.Crystal’s patience, by then brittle, finally snapped. She told her son, just 12 and eyes wide with dread, to sprint for help. The boy did as told—his sneakers thudding down the front steps—and in the awful seconds that followed, gunshots echoed through the walls. That is the kind of sound that divides life into ‘before’ and ‘after.’Deputies arrived fast, but not fast enough. What they discovered inside has haunted even the veteran responders. Christmas lights flickered, still cheerful, on walls now marked by tragedy. Crystal Kenney, 42, was dead on the living room floor. Her daughter, 13, bleeding and terrified, had somehow survived—clutching her shoulder where a bullet had ripped through flesh and grazed her face. In a back bedroom, the youngest, just a year old, slept on in her crib, blissfully untouched by the horror. “A Christmas miracle,” Sheriff Grady Judd would later call it, his usual composure wearing thin.Every corner of the Kenney house held reminders of ordinary family hopes: presents stacked in careful piles, a handwritten list of chores taped to the fridge, half-eaten cookies. It is those details that strike hardest—a home painstakingly shaped for comfort, now marred by sudden loss.Afterwards, Jason didn’t linger. He left, dialing his sister from the road to admit what he could barely grasp himself: “I did something very, very bad.” His words, relayed through panicked family, were the first anyone outside the home heard of the carnage. Not long after, deputies tracked him to his father’s shed. He locked himself inside, and amid the scrapyard shabbiness, he ended his own life as the law closed in.There were signs, in hindsight. A note, found later among Crystal’s things, laid it bare in her own hand: he was back on cocaine, back to a bottle, and she pleaded for change he never made. “You need God,” she had written—words meant to save, lost in the fog of that night.Crystal’s children, now left to grandparents’ care, face an uncertain Christmas. The dazzling tree and unopened gifts serve as faint, cruel reminders of how quickly a year—or a family—can unravel. When spoken to by detectives, the 13-year-old managed, with remarkable defiance, to say only: “I begged him, don’t shoot me,” before he fired anyway. It’s hard to imagine what she’ll carry from those moments, or what the youngest will come to understand as the years go by.Sheriff Judd doesn’t often stumble for words, but he did this time. The investigators are shaken, and so is much of Polk County. Family friends circle the wagons, casseroles and condolences arriving in a steady trickle. Neighbors leave lanterns on late. It’s small comfort, this sense of community when the lights inside one house have gone out so thoroughly.The shock will fade for some. But not for those who survived and not for those who responded. The Christmas tree, heavy with ornaments, will come down soon—but the memory of that night will persist, tangled in the branches for a long time yet.