Alexa Bartell was killed by a rock thrown at her car at night by strangers who were having fun throwing rocks at passing vehicles. Just for fun. Many drivers who were luckier than Alexa were nonetheless frightened as rocks noisily crashed their cars’ trunks, or glass windows. None of it made sense to me; there was simply no rationale. The fact is: on April 19, 2023, Alexa was driving her car, I imagine happily, on her way to a date with a friend she loved dearly. Unbeknownst to her, out in the anonymous darkness of the night on a Jefferson County Highway, three young men in a truck barreled toward her car at 80 mph, excitedly holding a landscaping rock. On launching it at her car, the impact sounded like a “rail gun going off.”

Alexa Bartell’s luck ran out at the impact, with the rock thrown from the fast-moving truck, demolishing her head. It would be revealed at the trial that the three young men actually jumped up and down in their macabre celebratory Eurekas. Turning their truck around, they took pictures of Alexa — for the memory.

Three 18-year-old young men killed Alexa. In most societies, men their age would have been raising families, or fighting in revolutions to overthrow tyrants or to defend homelands from the aggression of dictators across the border. Instead, Joseph Koenig, Nicholas ”Mitch” Karol-Chik, and Zachary Kwak spent their youthful energy frightening motorists on public highways.

Koenig was sentenced to life in prison without parole. His accomplices also will spend many years in prison.

Why? What for? Is there no sense of right and wrong? Surely it must have occurred to them that the large rock thrown while driving a truck at 80 mph would most likely kill? Was the anonymous death of another human being inconsequential?

Where were their parents? Is there any parental or societal responsibility for poor Alexa Bartell’s pain and death?

One does not have to look too far to find youthful criminal behavior of our and our neighbors’ children. Each time these mindless acts result in unimaginable tragedies, we wonder: why didn’t our social services, police or schoolteachers intervene? At the back of my mind is a belief that America’s parenting leaves a lot to be desired.

As I write this, I’m thinking of another awful tragedy that occurred a few years before Alexa’s. On Aug. 5, 2020, Kevin Bui set a house on fire, killing a Senegalese family of five. The reason? His stolen iPhone pinged in a home in Denver’s Green Valley Ranch. In revenge, he and his associates — Dylan Seibert and Gavin Seymour — set the wrong house on fire, killing Djibril Diol, Adja Diol, Khadija Diol, Hassan Diol, and Hawa Beye, ages 7 months to 29 years.

Little is written about families in American crimes: be it about where stone-throwing murderers, middle-of-the night arsonists, or murderous rapists come from. It is as if we think they emerge from the earth’s womb fully formed, ready to commit their evil deeds and not members of families that see them every day.

There is much that high school-age young men can do for families, communities and society rather than expend their energy squeezing villainous excitement out of the worst acts imaginable. We hasten to describe the gory, forgetting the culprits’ human stories and the reasons they turned out the way they did. Most are children who will spend tormented years in prison. Victims’ families get but a cursory mention, an eternity’s worth of grief given short shrift. The pictures we draw of these heinous crimes should remind us that we’re still feeling beings, humans with souls, who shed tears.

Thinking about the incidents I describe, as well as many other youthful criminal acts, a certain American youth with too much time on his hands, and too little mental occupation comes to mind, a time when dangerous, harmful acts cross the mind.

I am reminded of many societies that require their youth spend some time in compulsory service before they “grow up.” Surely for the Mormon youth, this is a time well spent as missionaries for their faith.

Far too many young men are lost in the maelstrom of ideologies, falling prey to doom and destruction in seemingly meaningless lives. The best cure for such wayward ennui is good counsel, busy minds and busy hands.

Pius Kamau, M.D., a retired general surgeon, is president of the Aurora-based Africa America Higher Education Partnerships; co-founder of the Africa Enterprise Group and an activist for minority students ‘STEM education. He is a National Public Radio commentator, a Huffington Post blogger, a past columnist for Denver dailies and is featured on the podcast, “Never Again.”