Kevin Watts was a 42-year-old husband and father from Shepherdsville, Kentucky, who loved racing and built a race car with his two teenage sons. In the pre-dawn hours of January 22, 2022, two men in a stolen white Dodge pickup hitched Watts’s trailer, with the race car inside, and drove off. Awakened by the noise, Watts pursued in his own car without a weapon or a cell phone. The chase ended a short distance away at 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. Deputies found him alone and he died at the scene.

Investigators recovered a cell phone at the crash site that helped identify two suspects: 38-year-old Richard K. Reno and 22-year-old Bradlee Simmons. Reno was arrested January 31, 2022, on murder and robbery charges. Simmons was later found and arrested after being shot in the leg by Kevin’s brother, Stanley Watts, in a parking lot; Stanley was charged with attempted murder and unlawful gun possession. Simmons ultimately pleaded guilty to theft and being a persistent felony offender and was sentenced to 12 years in December 2023; a plea and sentencing for Stanley occurred in October 2023. The status of charges against Richard Reno remained pending as of December 2023.

Did anyone in the area see the stolen white Dodge pickup or the trailer the morning of January 22, 2022?