Amy Watkins

Who was Amy Watkins?

Amy Watkins was a social worker from Topeka, Kansas, who was murdered while walking down the street on March 8, 1999, in Brooklyn, New York. Her death sparked widespread dismay in New York City, where the murder rate had been steadily dropping since 1990, and days later 300 marchers expressed their grief with a candlelight march on her Prospect Heights street. Mayor Rudy Giuliani attended her wake.

Watkins graduated from the University of Kansas in 1996, and was a student at the Hunter College School of Social Work at the time of her death. Both institutions established scholarships in her name. The New York City chapter of the National Association of Social Workers also renamed a scholarship in her honor.