Witnesses, physical evidence and police observations tied Steven Black to the 2025 attack that left Watkins fatally injured.

FORT WORTH, Texas — A Tarrant County jury convicted Steven Black of murder and sentenced him to life in prison after prosecutors said he repeatedly attacked 50-year-old Susan Watkins on a Fort Worth street in July 2025, leaving her with injuries that caused her death five days later. Black, 48 at the time of his trial, will be eligible for parole after serving 30 years, according to reporting on the verdict and sentence.

The conviction brought a legal resolution to a case that began the morning of July 9, 2025, in the 900 block of South Jennings Avenue in Fort Worth’s Near Southside. Police were sent to the area after a caller reported seeing a man assaulting a woman. Investigators later identified the woman as Watkins. Witnesses described seeing parts of the attack, and police said an officer encountered Black nearby after receiving a description of the assailant. The case moved from an assault investigation to a homicide after Watkins died at a hospital. More than a year later, prosecutors presented the eyewitness accounts, physical evidence and police observations to a jury.

The arrest affidavit provided an early account of how officers connected Black to the attack. One witness reported about 8:45 a.m. that a man was stomping on a woman’s head, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s reporting on the affidavit. Two witnesses described seeing a man kicking Watkins near a dumpster. Another said the man was carrying a rock and dropped it when officers arrived. Police found Watkins critically injured in the area. An officer then saw a man who matched the description supplied by a witness. According to the affidavit, the officer tried to contact him, but the man ran before he was detained. Police identified him as Black.

The officer reported seeing what appeared to be blood on the lower part of Black’s legs after he was detained. The affidavit said Black did not explain where the apparent blood came from. Investigators also recovered physical evidence from the area, including a piece of rock or asphalt that prosecutors later connected to the assault. At trial, prosecutors used that evidence along with eyewitness testimony to reconstruct the violence for jurors. They argued that Black threw Watkins down, stomped on her and struck her with the piece of asphalt. Defense lawyers Tim Brown and Kevin Novak represented Black, who did not testify. Reporting from the trial said the defense questioned whether the evidence established the intent required for murder.

The jury ultimately accepted the prosecution’s case and found Black guilty. Prosecutors Tim Rodgers and Grayson Ezzell handled the case for the Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office. During closing arguments, prosecutors displayed the piece of asphalt admitted as evidence and emphasized the repeated nature of the assault. Their presentation was unusually stark because the physical object at the center of the case remained before jurors as they considered whether the state had proved murder beyond a reasonable doubt. The court proceedings supplied details that had not been part of the first reports after Watkins was attacked, but the basic sequence remained consistent with what police had alleged after Black’s arrest.

Watkins survived the initial assault and was taken to a hospital, where she remained for five days before dying from her injuries. Her death transformed the legal stakes for Black and left her family asking a question the criminal case did not ultimately answer: why she was attacked. The arrest affidavit did not describe a known relationship between Watkins and Black, and police did not publicly identify a motive in the initial investigation. Watkins’ relatives told local television reporters that they did not believe the two knew each other before the encounter. No verified evidence released publicly has established a motive, and the verdict resolved Black’s criminal responsibility without supplying an explanation for what led to the encounter.

That unanswered question became especially painful for Watkins’ family because they said her life had already been marked by difficult circumstances. Relatives said she had been living on the street around the time she was attacked. Her daughter, Briana Watkins, described her mother publicly as compassionate and resilient despite personal and health struggles. In a fundraiser established after her death, Briana Watkins said her mother made people feel seen and cared for. The family was based in and around Mineral Wells, west of Fort Worth. Watkins’ mother, Dorothy Grimes, also recalled a woman who worried about other people and stood up to bullies. Those descriptions offered a fuller account of Watkins beyond the circumstances in which police found her.

The family also disclosed that Watkins was a registered organ donor. In the fundraiser, her daughter wrote that the family chose to honor those wishes after her death. The fundraiser was created to help with cremation, an urn, a small burial plot, a headstone and costs associated with handling Watkins’ affairs. The family’s public statements focused not only on how she died but on how they wanted her remembered. That distinction became important in a case whose court testimony centered heavily on violence. Their accounts portrayed Watkins as a mother and daughter who had experienced hardship, had remained connected to people who loved her and was still regarded by them as someone who tried to help others.

Police and prosecutors relied heavily on people who were in the South Jennings Avenue area when the attack occurred. Their accounts placed an assailant near Watkins and gave responding officers a description to follow. The presence of several witnesses distinguished the case from killings in which investigators must first determine when or where an assault occurred. Here, officers were dispatched while the violence was being reported, and a suspect was located in the immediate area. The affidavit said one witness saw the man carrying a rock before officers arrived, while others described kicking or stomping. Those observations, together with the condition of the scene and the evidence recovered there, formed the factual bridge between the initial police response and the prosecution presented more than a year later.

Black’s sentence means the case has moved from trial to the punishment phase of his incarceration, although the life term does not make parole legally impossible. Reporting on the sentence says he can become eligible for parole after 30 years. Eligibility does not mean release is guaranteed; it marks the point at which parole can be considered under the sentence imposed. The available reports do not identify a publicly announced post-trial proceeding that would change the verdict or sentence. What remains unresolved in the public record is the same issue Watkins’ family raised soon after her death: what prompted the attack. The jury answered who was criminally responsible. It did not provide the family with a motive.

Author note: Last updated October 17, 2026.