Alexa Bartell died Wednesday night after someone threw a rock through her car windshield as she was driving near Denver.
Worse, the rock attack on her was one of at least five that occurred that night and into the early hours of Thursday, ABC News reported.
“This is the most tragic of a series of similar crimes that happened overnight throughout Jefferson and Boulder counties,” a Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department news release said.
The spree began when someone threw a rock through a windshield in Westminster, Colorado, at about 10 p.m. No one was injured.
A half-hour later, a driver was injured about five miles away by a rock thrown through a windshield. Within a minute, another vehicle was struck by a rock that damaged the car but caused no injuries.
The fourth incident of the night was the one in which Bartell was killed.
Bartell, 20, was talking to a friend on the phone while driving when she suddenly went silent. Concerned, her friend went looking for her and found her dead in her damaged car in a Jefferson County field.
About two hours later, another car was damaged a few miles from where Bartell was hit.
The sheriff’s office said there may be more victims. No suspects have been identified.
Sadly, this kind of behavior is nothing new.
Four young men engaging in theft and vandalism threw rocks off a Pennsylvania overpass in 2014. One of the rocks struck and permanently injured an Ohio woman, according to City News.
In 2017, four Michigan teens threw a rock from an overpass, killing a 32-year-old man, the Detroit Free Press reported.
In some respects, it’s a reflection of the human heart. In others, it’s a sign of our times.
Recently, the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University found that in the three years since the beginning of the pandemic, there’s been a 10-point drop in the belief that human life is sacred, from 39 to 29 percent.
Even among those claiming to be born-again Christians, recognition of the sacredness of life dropped from 60 to 48 percent from 2020 to 2023.
We shouldn’t be surprised. The Bible continually tells of an ebb and flow in the hardness of people’s hearts.
We see which way the tide is going now.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.