Trials of rock-throwing suspects set, but pleas postponed

Two other suspects, 19-year-old Nicholas Karol-Chik and Zachary Kwak, 19, were also arrested for the rock-throwing 

They will be tried separately over a span of two months starting this June.

The trials of Nicholas “Mitch” Karol-Chik, Zachary Kwak and Joseph Koenig are expected to take at least nine days each.

Karol-Chik will be the first to stand trial starting with jury selection on June 7. Kwak’s trial is scheduled to begin June 24^th and will stagger to fit the July 4 holiday. Koenig will be the final of the three to be tried. His trial scheduled to begin July 19, a Friday, and end around August 1.

Prosecutor Katherine Decker told 1^st Judicial District Judge Christopher Zenisek in a hearing that of the three suspects, Koenig’s trial may be the longest by one day.

When asked why his client faced one extra day of trial, Koenig’s attorney, Martin Stuart, said: “We don’t know. We’re curious about that too.”

One of the unknowns in the case is which one of the then-18-year-olds did what, and was there one ringleader who led the other two during a night of mischief which turned deadly. 

The defendants' pleas were postponed until March 15. On that date, the three men will be in the courtroom together, but for most of the proceedings from here on out, they will be represented separately. The men are expected to enter not-guilty pleas.

On the early evening of April 19, the three teens loaded up the back seat of Koenig's pickup truck with landscaping material and allegedly went on a deadly rock hurtling spree — at times pretending they were Marines hitting targets in a combat zone, according to a Jefferson County Sheriff Office's arrest affidavit. 

Alexa Bartell, 20, died almost instantly when a large, rounded landscaping rock slammed into her windshield at around 10:45 p.m. on a lonely stretch of Indiana Street just south of Highway 128, Jefferson County Sheriffs said. The rock hit her in the head and exiting out the back window before it came to rest a good  distance from her car, according to arrest documents.

The three suspects face 13 charges, including one count each of first-degree murder with extreme indifference in Bartell's death.

They also face six charges each of attempted murder with extreme indifference and six counts of second-degree assault in connection with six other victims whose vehicles were also blasted by landscaping rocks the night of April 19.

Karol-Chik and Koenig also face two extra counts of attempted murder and assault in an earlier bizarre incident involving a concrete statue head which was hurled at an oncoming vehicle in Arvada.

Zenisek ruled last month the defendants would be tried separately. 

He explained his reasoning for his decision to sever the trials in an order last month:

"It will be extremely difficult for a jury, upon hearing Karol-Chik’s statement to the police, not to consider the statement against Koenig. This will be the case even with an admonitory instruction because it is unrealistic to expect a jury not to exercise common sense and conclude that Karol-Chik describes Koenig as the driver. At the very least, if the jury did not draw that inference, it would be confused as to why an unnamed driver was not charged and is not a witness."

Karol-Chik, Kwak and Koenig and their two lawyers each have shared the courtroom during the initial hearings, making for crowded and sometimes confusing proceedings. All three men were in the car that night, during the deadly rock-throwing incident, but the stories of two of them didn't line up, according to investigators. 

Once arrested, Karol-Chik and Kwak waived their Miranda rights and spoke with investigators. Karol-Chik said that it was Kwak who threw the rock that slammed into Alexa Bartell's windshield killing her. But Kwak said that it was Koenig who threw it. 

Karol-Chik used the word "we" throughout his four hour videotaped interview which prosecutors feared could confuse jurors if any of the three were tried at the same time. 

Kwak had met the other two men just a couple of weeks before the rock-throwing incident and thus was not involved in the statue-throwing incident. 

Bartell's family has been present for every hearing, as have the parents of each suspect.