A teen was convicted of murder Friday, after he was found guilty of throwing a rock at a car windshield which killed the woman driving.
According to the Associated Press, the teen was part of a trio from Denver that reportedly cheered each other on while they threw rocks.
Joseph Koenig, now 20, was convicted of first-degree murder for the death of Alexa Bartell on April 19, 2023. He was also found guilty of attempted murder and other lesser offenses related to throwing rocks and other objects at vehicles on the night Bartell was killed, as well as in the weeks leading up to the tragedy.
His co-defendants, who were with him during the incident, cooperated with prosecutors and testified against him as part of plea deals.
Bartell’s mother, Kelly Bartell, said that justice had been served. She expressed a degree of sympathy for Koenig and the two other young men, all of whom were 18 years old at the time of her daughter’s death.
“It’s hard to be happy or feel satisfied that justice was served today, because I feel one amazing life was lost and three others are also lost and impacted,” Bartell said.
Jurors agreed the 9-pound landscaping rock taken from a Walmart parking lot, was the rock that killed Bartell. However, the teens turned on each other and gave conflicting accounts of the events while Bartell’s DNA was the only one found on the rock.
Testimony from Zachary Kwak and Nicholas Karol-Chik, became key to the prosecution.
Koenig’s lawyers claimed that Kwak was responsible for throwing the rock that killed Bartell.
However, both Kwak and Karol-Chik, who accepted plea deals on lesser charges potentially resulting in reduced prison terms, testified that Koenig was the one who threw the fatal rock. While Karol-Chik stated that all three had thrown around 10 rocks that night, Kwak insisted in his testimony that he did not throw any.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Katharine Decker explained to jurors that the damage to Bartell’s car aligned with testimony from Karol-Chik, suggesting Koenig, a left-handed driver, had thrown the rock in a shotput-like manner out of the driver’s-side window.
Decker argued that even if jurors doubted Koenig personally threw the rock, they should still convict him of first-degree murder as a participant in the conspiracy.
