Inset: Steven Black (Tarrant County Jail). Background: The Fort Worth, Texas, pedestrian area where authorities say Black fatally attacked a woman with a rock (Google Maps).
A Texas man has been sentenced to life in prison for the violent killing of a woman in Fort Worth last summer, a case prosecutors described in stark and disturbing terms.
Steven Black, 48, was found guilty Friday by a Tarrant County jury on one count of murder in the July 2025 death of 50-year-old Susan Watkins.
Following the verdict, Black was sentenced to life behind bars, with the possibility of parole after 30 years, the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office said in a press release.
“He stomped on her head with his feet, threw large rocks at her head, and left her body behind a dumpster,” prosecutors wrote in the release.
The fatal attack happened on July 9, 2025, near the 900 block of South Jennings Avenue, in Fort Worth’s Near Southside neighborhood just south of downtown.
Watkins’ family members believe she and Black did not know each other before the encounter, according to Fort Worth-based NBC affiliate KXAS.
The assault took place on a Wednesday. Watkins, who had been living on the street after falling on difficult times, was taken to a nearby hospital, where she died from her injuries the following weekend.
“Despite her situation, she was still the light of my life; she was still someone who made me laugh,” the victim’s daughter told the TV station. “She was still someone I loved dearly. She just cared about others more than that I’ve ever seen anybody ever care about someone else, ever.”
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During the attack, Black threw Watkins onto the pavement and repeatedly stomped on her head and body with his foot, police said, according to a report by Dallas-based Fox affiliate KDFW.
Witnesses at the scene identified the assailant and described the brutal violence, according to law enforcement. The rock used to further attack Watkins was found near the crime scene.
Black, for his part, was still in the same general area as the victim when he was arrested — an area with relatively large amounts of foot traffic. The defendant was covered in blood and trying to run away.
No motive was offered for the crime.
At trial, prosecutors described the ferocity of the violence and said the killer acted without remorse or restraint.
One prosecutor described how the piece of asphalt was raised over and over, then brought down over and over into the victim’s face as her legs twitched, according to a courtroom report by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. At one point, Black grabbed the dumpster for balance in order to stomp on Watkins’ head, the state told the jury.
When police found the victim, a visible piece of rock was still on her head, the Star-Telegram reported at the time.
Ultimately, Black killed Watkins “by bashing her brains in with his foot and with this hunk of asphalt,” prosecutor Grayson Ezzell said in the state’s closing argument, lifting the asphalt to show the court.
The defendant did not testify in his own defense.
The post ‘Bashing her brains in with his foot’: Man repeatedly stomped on woman and then beat her to death with a rock first appeared on Law & Crime.
