Alexa Bartell, Zachary Kwak, Joseph Koenig, Nicholas Karol-Chik (Images via Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office)
The three teenagers accused of murdering Alexa Bartell with a “landscaping rock” while the 20-year-old was talking on the phone with a friend last week have been officially booked, photographed and identified as high school students.
The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office in Colorado announced yesterday that it has made three arrests in the death of Bartell, a murder that law enforcement has described as ‘extremely indifferent’ first-degree murder . Joseph Edwin Koenig, Nicholas “Mitch” James Karol-Chik and Zachary Kwak, both 18-year-old Arvada residents, are charged with carrying out the rock-throwing spree on Wednesday, April 19, which stole the life of Bartell.
CBS News Colorado reported that the defendants attended school at Ralston Valley High School, Standley Lake High School and online, although the report did not specify which teenager is enrolled where.
When authorities began investigating the case, they said the suspects, “probably from a vehicle or the side of the road, threw a large rock at the victim’s vehicle, which struck her and killed”. Investigators, who said they may have been looking for a pickup truck, eventually located a black 2016 Chevy Silverado that they linked to the murderous crime spree.
The boulder that shattered Bartell’s windshield and killed her knocked the driver’s Chevy Spark off the road, causing it to crash into a fence and come to a stop in a field. A friend was on the phone with Bartell when it all went quiet.
“In the moments leading up to her death, Alexa was on the phone talking to a friend when the phone went silent,” the sheriff’s office said. “Alexa’s friend tracked her phone and drove to Indiana St. She found Alexa fatally injured inside her car, which was off the road in a field.”
The investigation soon determined that there had been several stone-throwing incidents the night of Bartell’s death, as well as one after midnight on April 20. Vehicles.
“On the night of Tuesday, April 25 through 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 while driving north on 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 latest in a series of vehicles hit by large landscaping boulders during a frenzy that began shortly after 10:00 p.m. that night at 100th and Simms in Westminster.”
Authorities credited “mobile device forensics and supporting public information.” According to the latest reports, the mobile phone company’s data warrants allowed geofencing investigators to place suspects’ phones near the series of crime scenes.
In Colorado, first degree murder by extreme indifference is committed when there are “circumstances indicative of an attitude of universal wickedness manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life generally” – when one or more defendants “engage in conduct which creates a serious risk of death to a person or persons other than himself and thereby causes the death of another person”.
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