Kevin Watts, a 42-year-old White man from Shepherdsville, Kentucky, was a husband and father who built a race car with his two teenage sons. His brother described him as his best friend, an honest man who worked every day to care for his family. In the pre-dawn hours of January 22, 2022, two men in a stolen white Dodge pickup truck pulled into Watts’s driveway and hitched his trailer, with the race car inside, to their vehicle.
Awakened by the noise, Watts jumped into his own car to pursue them. His wife later noted that he left without a weapon or a cell phone.
The chase ended a short distance away at the intersection of Woodsdale Road and Cedar Grove Road in Bullitt County, where a crash occurred. After the collision, one of the thieves shot Watts in the upper left leg. The two men then fled on foot. When sheriff's deputies arrived, they found Watts alone. He died from his injury at the scene before he could provide a description of his attackers.
Investigators found a cell phone at the crash site, which reportedly helped them identify two suspects: 38-year-old Richard K. Reno and 22-year-old Bradlee Simmons. Police arrested Reno on January 31, 2022, charging him with murder and robbery. Simmons remained at large for a few more days.
The case took a dramatic turn on February 2, 2022. Kevin Watts’s brother, Stanley Watts, located Simmons in the parking lot of a Pic-Pac grocery store in Louisville and shot him in the leg. Simmons sustained non-life-threatening injuries and was taken to a hospital for treatment. He was arrested later that day and charged with the murder and robbery of Kevin Watts. Stanley Watts was subsequently arrested and charged with attempted murder and possession of a handgun by a convicted felon.
In October 2023, Stanley Watts reached a plea agreement. Prosecutors dropped the attempted murder charge, and an assault charge was amended to assault under extreme emotional disturbance. He pleaded guilty to that charge and to gun possession, receiving a one-year sentence that was conditionally discharged.
The following month, Bradlee Simmons also accepted a plea deal. In exchange for his statement regarding his co-defendant’s actions, Simmons pleaded guilty to theft and being a persistent felony offender, and the murder charge against him was dismissed. In December 2023, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison. As of that month, the charges against Richard Reno were still pending adjudication.
