A Chicago man was sentenced to life in prison plus 20 years on Friday for fatally shooting two friends in the head and injuring two others at a 2018 birthday outing on Michigan Avenue in the Loop.
In May, a Cook County jury convicted Marquis Watkins, 46, of two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated battery by discharging a handgun, according to court records. On Friday, Judge Mary Brosnahan imposed his sentence.
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The shootings occurred shortly after midnight on October 1, 2018, as Watkins and four longtime friends drove along the 500 block of South Michigan Avenue in a Chrysler 300. The group had come downtown to celebrate Bruce Miller’s 29th birthday, who was traveling in the front passenger seat beside Watkins.
Watkins fired inside the vehicle without warning, according to authorities.
Miller was shot twice in the head. Steve Nixon, 31, sat behind Watkins in the center back seat and was also shot in the head. Both guys died in Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
Two additional passengers, both 29 years old and Watkins’ half-brothers, were shot in the shoulder. One of them, seated in the back, told investigators that he witnessed muzzle flashes from Watkins’ direction before understanding he had been shot.
Following the gunfire, the car lost control, colliding with a planter box and flipping onto its roof. Watkins and one of his injured half-brothers climbed out of the debris. That man fled to the Congress Hotel for rescue.
Prosecutors assert that Watkins, the sole unshot individual in the vehicle, subsequently provided a videotaped confession in which he admitted to firing the pistol. Watkins, a married father of three, had a home in Brainerd and had no criminal history prior to the incident.
