Colorado authorities have detained three men for reportedly hurling giant landscaping pebbles at cars, one of which struck and killed 20-year-old driver Alexa Bartell last week just outside Denver. In response to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, the suspects, Nicholas “Mitch” Karol-Chik, Joseph Koenig, and Zachary Kwak, currently a senior in high school, age 18, were detained on Wednesday at their parents’ homes in Arvada, Colorado. First-degree murder charges are being brought against all three.
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What Took Place?
On April 19, six drivers in the greater Denver region reportedly claimed that rocks had been thrown at their vehicles. Minor injuries were sustained by two of the drivers. Bartell was killed at 10:45 p.m. in Jefferson County when a large rock smashed through her front windscreen and struck her car.
She worried when the line dropped while she was talking with a buddy. The buddy traced her cell phone to the location where Bartell was identified. According to the sheriff’s office, “mobile device forensics” and public knowledge contributed to the arrests. According to the sheriff’s office, it’s unknown who of the three suspects threw the stone that struck Bartell and killed him, but all three are thought to have thrown stones throughout the hour-long rampage.
How Widespread is This?
This is undoubtedly not the first deadly rock-throwing event in the United States, even though it is uncommon. In Temple, Texas, in 2019, Keila Flores, a 33-year-old mother of three, was murdered after a big rock thrown from a railroad flyover struck the car’s windscreen, according to the police. Flores was seated in the back seat.
According to the investigators, Joe Shelton, 54, was murdered in 2018 while traveling to work in Nashville when a massive piece of concrete thrown from a bridge went through the windscreen. In Genesee County, Michigan, in 2017, 32-year-old father Kenneth White was murdered after a big rock that had been hurled from a bridge through the van’s windscreen. White was seated in the backseat. Later, four teens who had been ‘overpassing’ acknowledged throwing rocks from the flyover and were given adult jail sentences.
Marquise Byrd, 22, was murdered in the same year when a sandbag thrown from a flyover near Toledo, Ohio, shattered the windscreen of the car he was riding in. Later, four teenagers admitted to murder, manslaughter, and vehicle vandalism in juvenile court but avoided prison time.
According to the sheriff’s office, the three defendants in Colorado are accused of “first-degree murder, extreme indifference,” and further charges are anticipated to be brought against them. On Thursday, they must appear in court. One of the unharmed drivers in the alleged rock-throwing rampage, Nathan Tipton, a Lyft and Uber driver, expressed astonishment at Bartell’s passing. “I felt for Alexa and her family when I found out that this chain of incidents took a young lady’s life,” Tipton told reporters on Tuesday. “It gave me a little shock. He continued that no parent should lose their child due to a random act. “It’s tragic,” you say.
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