The last time Teletha Watson and her older brother Kevin Watson spent time together, they were laughing and buying popsicles and candy at a gas station.
Within a couple of hours, Teletha Watson, 35, was scrambling to Mount Sinai Hospital after getting a call from their sister saying that Kevin Watson had been shot while he streamed on Facebook Live.
“He’s a fighter, that’s what was going through my head,” Teletha Watson said. “He’s going to be okay. Nothing’s going to happen. I’m almost there.”
Kevin Watson, 40, was streaming on Facebook Live about 6:15 p.m. Wednesday in the 5000 block of West Madison Street when a driver approached him and an occupant of the car fired shots, Chicago police and his sister said.
Watson, of Austin, suffered a gunshot wound to his chest and was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead about a half an hour later, at 6:52 p.m., according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
“We can’t eat, we can’t sleep, my head has been banging,” Teletha Watson said. “I’m hurt, I’m angry, I’m sad, I’m sick. I don’t even believe that this is the new reality.”
Her brother had rock solid principles he lived by until the very end of his life. When approached by the gunman, Kevin Watson stepped out of his car to fight instead of using a gun and the gunman opted to shoot him instead, according to his sister.
“He gave them a pass, and I want people to know that he gave them the chance to fight like men,” Teletha Watson said.
Teletha Watson spoke to detectives and she said she told them “there was absolutely no way” they couldn’t be able to find her brother’s killer.
“They have all the resources, literally,” she said.
Kevin Watson displayed a playful spirit who loved not just his 7-year-old son but his nieces and nephews as if they were his own.
“I’ve had people walk up to me to tell me that my brother helped them and their kids and I didn’t even know some of these people,” Teletha Watson said.
Kevin Watson was jailed when he was 15, his sister said, and often told young relatives “not to follow in his footsteps.”
“We have some [relatives] going off to college right now, honors program children who are into sports because of him,” Teletha Watson said. “He came back into the community and that’s who he went for, the kids and the teenagers.”
Kevin Watson was an entrepreneur who promoted parties, clubs, shoes and dress clothes. His “big lips and smile” were always the first thing someone noticed when he arrived.
“My brother was the goofiest, the funniest, the most liveliest person I know,” Teletha Watson said. “He was there in the present for these kids, for his family.”