Her family described a compassionate woman who endured hardship as a jury imposed a life sentence on the man who killed her.
FORT WORTH, Texas — Long before Susan Watkins’ name became attached to a murder prosecution, she was a daughter and mother whose family said she remained generous through periods of hardship. After a Tarrant County jury convicted Steven Black of killing her, those relatives were left with a life sentence for Black but still no publicly established explanation for why Watkins was attacked.
Watkins was 50 when she was assaulted July 9, 2025, in the 900 block of South Jennings Avenue in Fort Worth’s Near Southside. She died five days later at a hospital. More than a year after the attack, Black was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison, with parole eligibility after 30 years. The verdict answered the criminal case’s central question of responsibility. It did not settle another issue that had troubled Watkins’ family from the first days after her death: whether she knew Black and what, if anything, had brought them together before the violence began. Public reports of the investigation and trial have not established a motive.
Her daughter, Briana Watkins, used a fundraiser created after the killing to tell a story that could not be found in arrest records. She wrote that her mother’s life had included personal struggles, health problems and other hardships but that those experiences had not erased her concern for people around her. She described Watkins as strong, compassionate and resilient and said she had a way of making people feel seen and valued. The family was not planning a traditional funeral at the time, according to the fundraiser. Instead, the daughter sought help with cremation, an urn, a small burial plot and headstone, travel and other costs connected with handling her mother’s affairs.
The fundraiser also said Watkins was a registered organ donor and that the family intended to honor her wishes. For relatives, that became part of how they spoke about a death otherwise documented through police descriptions, hospital care and criminal proceedings. Her mother, Dorothy Grimes, told local media that Watkins worried about other people and did not tolerate bullying. Briana Watkins similarly described her mother as someone who kept caring about others despite her circumstances. Watkins had been living on the street around the time she was attacked, relatives said, a fact that appeared prominently in early coverage but did not, by itself, explain the course of her life or the relationships that remained important to her.
The investigation began after witnesses saw portions of the attack in the South Jennings Avenue area. The arrest affidavit, as reported by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, said police received a call at about 8:45 a.m. from a witness who reported seeing a man stomping on a woman’s head. Two witnesses saw a man kicking Watkins behind a dumpster. Another said a man was carrying a rock and dropped it when officers arrived. Police found Watkins critically injured and an officer soon encountered a man matching the description given by a witness. Authorities identified that man as Black. According to the affidavit, he ran when the officer tried to make contact before being caught and detained.
An officer noticed what appeared to be blood on the lower part of Black’s legs, the affidavit said. Black did not explain its origin to police, according to the report. Investigators recovered a piece of rock or asphalt associated with the attack. Watkins was taken for emergency medical treatment but did not recover. Her death five days later turned the case into a homicide. Police did not identify a motive in the arrest affidavit, nor did the document describe a relationship between Watkins and Black. Her relatives said they believed he may have been a stranger to her, although the available public record does not independently establish precisely what contact, if any, they had before that morning.
Those unknowns remained while the prosecution moved toward trial. In court, the state’s focus was not on proving why Black attacked Watkins but on proving what he did and whether his actions satisfied the legal requirements for murder. Prosecutors Tim Rodgers and Grayson Ezzell presented witness testimony and physical evidence, including the piece of asphalt associated with Watkins’ injuries. Trial reporting said prosecutors used the object during closing arguments while describing the repeated attack. Black, represented by Tim Brown and Kevin Novak, did not testify. His attorneys challenged the state’s position on intent, according to courtroom coverage. Jurors ultimately rejected the defense argument and returned a murder conviction.
The punishment ensured that Black will remain incarcerated for decades. A life sentence with parole eligibility after 30 years does not promise release at that point; it establishes when he may first become eligible for consideration. For Watkins’ relatives, the sentence supplied a measure of legal finality but could not provide the information they had sought in the weeks after her death. Early news reports described family members hoping that surveillance footage from nearby businesses might clarify what happened before witnesses saw the assault. The sources reviewed for this report do not establish that investigators or prosecutors ultimately announced such an explanation.
The divide between what the justice system needed to decide and what a grieving family wanted to know is central to the case. Jurors had to determine whether the evidence proved Black committed murder. They were not required to solve every mystery surrounding the encounter. Witnesses placed the attacker at the scene. Police located Black nearby and documented their observations when he was detained. Prosecutors had the physical object they said was used against Watkins. Those facts formed a prosecutable chain of evidence even though the reason behind the violence remained uncertain. A motive can help explain a crime, but its absence from the public record did not prevent jurors from reaching a verdict based on the evidence presented.
For Watkins’ family, however, the question of motive had a different weight. Relatives were trying to understand the last episode in the life of someone they had known through years that included both difficulties and close family ties. The details they chose to publish after her death were not descriptions of a crime scene. They wrote about her personality, the way she treated other people and their plan to bring her remains home with dignity. Her daughter’s fundraiser said a smaller family in Mineral Wells was trying to create a place of remembrance. Those choices reflected a desire to ensure that the manner of Watkins’ death did not become the entire public meaning of her life.
The life sentence places Black’s future in the state prison system, subject to the terms of his sentence and any lawful post-conviction proceedings. For Watkins’ family, the court’s work and their own remembrance move on separate tracks. The jury has decided who was responsible for the killing, while public reporting continues to leave the motive uncertain. What relatives have been able to establish for themselves is how they want Watkins remembered: as more than a victim found badly injured near a Fort Worth dumpster, and more than a name attached to a murder verdict.
Author note: Last updated October 17, 2026.