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Alexa Bartell was simply driving home from work late one Wednesday night. Something almost everybody does every day. 

She was especially happy that evening on April 19, 2023. The 20-year-old woman loved her family, she loved her job at a flooring company where she worked with her mom, and she loved her new girlfriend who she was going to see that night. 

Life was going great – until three teenagers in another car hurled a heavy rock at her windshield that hit with the force of a cannon.

We’ve all had a piece of gravel ding our windshield, but a 9-pound landscaping rock, thrown at 104 mph into oncoming traffic hit Alexa with enough force to cause her skull to explode. 

All because these young men were bored and wanted to entertain themselves. They were so excited when her car ran off the road they drove back and took a selfie with the vehicle, never once checking on the woman inside they had killed. 

Afterall, this was the latest car in a series of rock throwing incidents, as many as 19, they are suspected to have caused and hurt several other people.

While everyone agreed the teens were to blame, there were different stories about who threw the rock that killed Alexa, until two of the young men, Zachary Kwak and Nicholas “Mitch” Karol-Chik, agreed in a plea deal that it was Joseph Koenig.

The left-handed driver had shot-put the rock straight at Alexa’s windshield as they drove past, killing her instantly.

Find out what the jury thought about these adrenaline junkies in the latest episode of the Gulf Coast Confidential podcast, “Rock throwing Joseph Koenig and gang punished for high-speed murder of Alexa Bartell.”

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