Alexa Bartell (Jefferson County Sheriff's Office) and an image of the scene where her car went off the road and through a fence (via 9News screengrab)
Investigators in Colorado say they've finally arrested the suspects responsible for the rock-throwing murder of 20-year-old Alexa Bartell, who was on the phone with a friend last week when a "large landscaping rock" smashed through her windshield.
The Jefferson County Sheriff's Office said that Joseph Edwin Koenig, Nicholas "Mitch" James Karol-Chik, and Zachary Kwak, each Arvada residents older than 18, face first-degree "extreme indifference" murder charges. Jefferson County jail records reviewed by Law&Crime showed that Koenig and Karol-Chik were booked Tuesday night; as of Wednesday morning, Kwak's name did not yet pop up in the jail search.
"Overnight Tuesday, April 25 – Wednesday, April 26, Jefferson County Sheriff's Investigators arrested three suspects in connection with the death of 20-year-old Alexa Bartell. Alexa was killed when a rock was thrown through her windshield as she was driving northbound in the 10600 block of Indiana Street at approximately 10:45 p.m. on Wednesday, April 19," the sheriff's office said. "Alexa's vehicle was the last of a series of vehicles struck by large landscaping rocks in a spree that began shortly after 10:00 p.m. that night at 100th and Simms in Westminster."
The suspects' mugshots were not immediately released. The sheriff's office said they don't yet know who was driving the suspect vehicle, a black 2016 Chevy Silverado.
Under Colorado law, first-degree murder by extreme indifference is committed when there are "circumstances evidencing an attitude of universal malice manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life generally," and a defendant "engages in conduct which creates a grave risk of death to a person, or persons, other than himself, and thereby causes the death of another."
Authorities, crediting "mobile device forensics and supporting information from the public," said they expect additional charges in the case.
As Law&Crime reported last week, the sheriff's office had reason to believe that the suspects were on a rock-throwing spree that had deadly results.
Alexa Bartell, also an Arvada resident, was driving around 10:45 p.m. on Wednesday, April 19, in her Chevy Spark on Indiana St. when the suspected perpetrators, "possibly from a vehicle or the side of the road, threw a large rock at the victim's vehicle, which struck and killed her."
"In the moments before she was killed, Alexa was on her phone talking to a friend when the phone went silent," the sheriff's office said. "Alexa's friend tracked her phone and drove to the location on Indiana St. She found Alexa fatally wounded inside her car, which was off the roadway in a field."
In terms of precedent, there are at least two other major cases in the last six years where teens in other states were charged with murder after throwing a rock and killing someone in a car.
In 2017, Michigan teens were charged with murder after a rock dropped from an overpass onto I-75 below and killed Kenneth White, the 32-year-old passenger in a van on the way home from work. The five teens sparked even more outrage by driving to McDonald's for food after the killing. Four of the teens pleaded guilty to manslaughter and the one who threw the rock pleaded guilty to murder.
Also in 2017 and involving the same interstate — but this time in Ohio — four more teens were accused of murdering 22-year-old Marquise Byrd, the passenger of a vehicle who was killed by a sandbag dropped from an overpass. Three of the teens pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter, while the one who threw the sandbag pleaded guilty to murder.
After news of Bartell's death broke, a high school classmate told KDVR that the 20-year-old had a longtime girlfriend and that they "seemed so in love."
"She really left a mark on a lot of people, and I hope that inspires people moving forward to be more like she was," Emily Audette told the Fox local affiliate.
"She was always super nice, super sweet, high energy. Always smiling. I mean, I used to see her every day at school, and I don't ever remember seeing her sad or being negative about anything," she added. "She just uplifted people all the time."
Bartell's friend Samantha Motisi said that "Everybody loved her."
"She was very popular. She was just like someone like, you know, who you can hang out with and smile," Motisi mourned, according to KMGH. "I didn't really know how to take it. I was in shock."
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Editor's note: the headline contained a typo where the word "indifference" should have been. That has been corrected.
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