The drunk dad who killed his wife and later himself in a fight over watching “Monday Night Football” also “intended to kill” his 13-year-old stepdaughter — but she survived as a bullet somehow passed straight up and through her head, according to the local sheriff, who called it a “Christmas miracle.”
The teen was shot twice as Joseph Kenney blew up into a murderous rage at being asked to turn off the game between his beloved San Francisco 49ers and the Indianapolis Colts.
She was found in her bedroom at their home in Lakeland late Monday with gunshot wounds to her head and shoulder.
“We later learned the bullet in the face hit her on the bridge of the nose [then] went straight up and out the top of her head,” Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said at a press conference, astonished she survived.
“That’s a Christmas miracle.”
Although the otherwise unidentified teen was rushed to the hospital in critical condition, she is making a remarkable recovery and is alert and talking, the sheriff said.
She was even able to give harrowing details about the attack by her stepdad, who shot and killed her mom before later turning the gun on himself.
“I begged him, ‘Don’t shoot me, don’t shoot me, don’t shoot me’ — and he shot me anyway,” she told investigators, according to the sheriff.
Kenney, 47, started seeing red after his wife asked him to change the channel from the blow-out game around 11 p.m. Monday. The fight got so bad she asked her 12-year-old son to call 911. The younger child ran pover to a neighbor’s house, when he heard the gunshots.
Police found Crystal Kenney dead and her 13-year-old daughter with the bullet wounds to her head and shoulder.
The couple’s 1-year-old daughter was also home, but found safe asleep in her crib. The 12-year-old, who is also Kenney’s stepchild, was also not hurt.
Before police arrived, Kenney fled the scene and drove to his late father’s home, which is in probate.
At one point, he called his sister in upstate New York and told her, “I did something terrible and this is the last time you’ll ever talk to me. You’ll see me on the news, but I am not going to jail,” according to the sheriff.
Police tracked him down and surrounded the home and attempted to urge Kenney, who was hiding out in a shed, to come. They then heard a single gunshot.
“When we make entrance into the shed, we find that Jason has shot himself in the forehead and he too is deceased,” Judd said.
During a search of the family’s home, deputies found an open but undated note Crystal earlier penned to her husband, urging him to get help for his substance abuse.
“You’re drinking, you’re using cocaine again. This is not the way the family should be. You need God,” the note states, according to the sheriff.
Relatives had indicated that Kenney beat his wife in past, but police never responded to any domestic violence calls from the home.
Judd said the children are now in the custody of their grandparents.
“The entire family was destroyed,” Judd said. “Our homicide detectives are distraught. When you go in there, there is a beautiful Christmas tree with lots of Christmas presents under it, just like the nuclear family should be.”
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