A Colorado man was found guilty of first-degree murder with extreme indifference in the death of 20-year-old Alexa Bartell, who died when a rock crashed through her car window while she was driving.
On Friday, April 25, a jury found Joseph Koenig, 20, guilty of several counts, including criminal attempt to commit first-degree murder, assault in the second degree, and criminal attempt to commit murder in the first degree for other rock throwing attacks.
“Despite a first-degree murder conviction—extreme indifference—none of this ever had to happen,” Jefferson County District Attorney Alexis King said following the verdict, according to the Denver Gazette.
“It is hard to be happy or feel satisfied that justice was served today,” Alexa’s mother, Kelly Bartell, told the Gazette. “It does not make up for the amazing life that was lost. Three more people were killed or injured as well.
Koenig’s friends Zachary Kwak and Nicholas “Mitch” Karol-Chik pleaded guilty to their roles in the attack last year, according to CBS News.
At around 10:45 p.m. on April 19, 2023, the three friends were hurling rocks at passing cars when one of them, a large nine-pound landscaping rock, smashed through Bartell’s driver’s side window. Bartell was on the phone with a friend while driving northbound in Denver’s 10600 block of Indiana Street.
When police and emergency personnel arrived on the scene, they discovered Bartell with a large head wound and no pulse.
According to CBS News, the rock was discovered nearby and contained traces of blood.
Her car 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,” according to a Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office press release.
“[Koenig] was excited,” Karol-Chik, who admitted to second-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder, testified about Koenig’s reaction after hitting Bartell’s car, according to the Gazette. “He kept turning from his seat to look at me and Zach in the backseat. He would simply look at us with a huge smile on his face.”
Koenig, Kwak, and Karol-Chick, who were 18 at the time, allegedly returned to photograph the crime scene “as a memento,” according to court documents obtained by NBC News.
They met the next day to coordinate their stories and become “blood brothers,” vowing not to tell anyone about the attack, according to NBC News.
During the trial, Koenig claimed that Kwak tossed the fatal rock.
Koening’s sentencing is scheduled for June 3, according to 9News. He faces life in prison for first-degree murder and could be sentenced to serve the other charges concurrently, according to the Denver Gazette. Kwak could live 20 to 32 years, while Karol-Chik could live 35 to 72.