The scene in a Colorado courtroom on Friday was a sad picture of how people act as a young man on death row talked about how his ex-best friend allegedly enjoyed violence.
In April 2023, Joseph Edwin Koenig, 20, and two friends were charged with “extreme indifference” murder in the death of Alexa Bartell, 20. Koenig was a senior in high school but was only 18 years old at the time.
The windscreen of the victim’s Chevy Spark was hit and broken by what the police called a “large landscaping rock” on that day. The young woman’s car went “off the roadway” on a remote Jefferson County road when it hit something.
Bartell died horribly in the crash that followed; the victim’s brain was found in her backseat, as authorities had said before.
“There was biological matter on the road,” the deputy sheriff in charge of the murder investigation said at a hearing in October 2023.
Three people involved in the case pleaded guilty in May 2024. Nicholas “Mitch” James Karol-Chik and Zachary Kwak both admitted to lower crimes. They both decided to say bad things about Koenig at his trial in Jefferson County District Court.
In different ways, each of the codefendants played an important role in the rock throwing that night. But Karol-Chik was more responsible than Kwak because he had also been a part of other acts like this in February 2023 and even a few days earlier, in early April 2023.
KAGOL-CHI told the jury on Friday that Koenig let out an excited whoop when he saw Bartell’s compact car drive off Indiana Street and through a fence in a field near the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge. The Denver Post reported that this happened in court.
The witness told the jury about the suspect, “He was excited.” “All he did was smile big at us.”
Several landscape rocks were thrown at other cars that night, both moving and stopped. But some of the facts that are said to be true aren’t clear.
According to the Post, Kwak says he didn’t throw any of the rocks that night. Kwak had earlier said that all he did was pick up the rocks from different parking places and give them to the two people in the front seat to throw.
Kwak earlier said that the teens’ car’s speedometer was at 103 mph right before the 9.3-pound rock that killed Bartell was thrown. But Karol-Chik said the car was going 80 mph. Both men said Koenig sped up before the last blow that killed him.
Karol-Chik went on to say that the three of them’s happy dancing and cheering was typical of how they had reacted when rocks were thrown that night: when a rock hit a car, they would be happy, and when it missed a car, they would be sad.
The witness said, “We only thought of them as cars.” “But we didn’t think about who might be driving them.”
At first, each suspect was charged with murder in the first degree, attempted murder, assault in the second degree, and attempted assault in the second degree. Kwak agreed to plead guilty to three counts of assault: one count of first-degree assault on Bartell and two counts of second-degree assault on three other people. It was agreed that Karol-Chik did kill someone in the second degree.
Even with plea deals, Karol-Chik and Kwak will spend decades in prison. Their sentencing dates are May 1 and May 2, respectively.
Koenig, on the other hand, has taken some blame. His lawyers say he should only be charged with manslaughter because none of the people who threw rocks meant to kill or hurt anyone else.
The defence also has some chances based on Karol-Chik’s long-changing statements. For months, he told prosecutors that Kwak was the one who threw the rock that killed Bartell.
It wasn’t until the fourth and final proffer interview, which was part of a plea deal, that Karol-Chik finally told police that Koenig killed the lady.
He and Koenig were best friends at the time and, according to Karol-Chik, “almost close enough to be brothers.” A judge heard this. Three out of the four proffer interviews were lied during because Koenig and Karol-Chik decided to blame Kwak, who they barely knew, for the crime after seeing police cars later that night.
Karol-Chik said in court on Friday, “We went over everything that happened, and that’s when Joe told me we wouldn’t have to worry about it; we’ll just say Zach did it.”
The Post says that during cross-examination, Karol-Chik also said that he had long thought Kwak had actually thrown the rock.
The witness said he remembered noticing how big the rock was and telling Kwak it was too big to throw, but Kwak told him not to. Kwak had said he would throw the rock if Karol-Chik wouldn’t. What did Karol-Chik say next?
After that, the government worked to make things a little better.
A lawyer asked on redirect, “Was it true that Joseph Koenig threw the rock that killed Alexa Bartell?”
The answer from Karol-Chik was “yes.”
They will choose who and what to believe next week. The closing statements are set to end on April 21.
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Witness: Ex-friend cheered after 9-pound rock from speeding car killed 20-year-old woman
Witness: Ex-friend cheered after 9-pound rock from speeding car killed 20-year-old woman
Witness: Ex-friend cheered after 9-pound rock from speeding car killed 20-year-old woman