A 20-year-old woman died after being hit by a large rock that was thrown through her windshield – in one of a string of similar incidents.
Alexa Bartell was driving in a suburb of Denver, Colorado, around 10.45pm on Wednesday when suspects hurled a rock at her vehicle, said the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office on Thursday. The rock struck and killed Bartell.
Bartell was on the phone with her friend at the time and her call went silent, cops said. The friend tracked the location of Bartell’s phone and found that she had driven off the road and into a field, and was deceased.
‘This is the most tragic of a series of similar crimes that happened overnight throughout Jefferson and Boulder counties,’ stated the sheriff’s office.
Before Bartell was struck, four other rocks were thrown at other drivers. At 10.04pm, a rock was hurled through a windshield around 100th Avenue and Simms Street in Westminster, according to a crime alert from the sheriff’s office. The driver was not injured.
At 10.26pm, another rock went through a windshield at Highway 93 and Highway 72 in Arvada and the driver suffered minor injuries.
Then at 10.30pm, another driver sustained minor injuries from a thrown rock at McCaslin Boulevard and South Indiana Street in Boulder County. A minute later, a rock was thrown at the same intersection and damaged the vehicle, while the driver was unscathed.
Bartell, of Arvada, was driving near the 10600 block of Indiana Street. It was not known if the suspects were in a vehicle or on the side of the road.
The sheriff’s office initially identified a light-colored Dodge Ram as a truck of interest in the case. The pickup and its owner were identified by cops on Thursday afternoon and investigators hours later confirmed that they were not involved in Bartell’s death or the related crime series.
No suspects were identified as of Thursday evening.
Metro Denver Crime Stoppers is offering an up to $2,000 reward for information on the incident.
‘We need your help!’ stated the sheriff’s office in a Facebook update on Friday afternoon. ‘No piece of information is insignificant.’
