Paramedics found guilty in Elijah McClain’s death following ketamine injection
Two Denver-area paramedics were convicted Friday in the 2019 killing of Elijah McClain, whom they injected with an overdose of the sedative ketamine after police put him in a neck hold.
It was the last trial against police and paramedics charged in the death of McClain, a 23-year-old Black man whose case received little attention until protests over the 2020 police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. An Aurora, Colo., police officer was convicted of homicide and third-degree assault in McClain’s death earlier this year, and two officers were acquitted.
This case stands out as the first of several recent criminal prosecutions in the U.S. against medical first responders to reach trial, potentially setting the bar for prosecutors in future cases.
The jury found Aurora Fire Rescue paramedics Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec guilty of criminally negligent homicide after a weeks-long trial in state district court. The jury also found Cichuniec guilty on one of two second-degree assault charges. Cooper was found not guilty on the assault charges. Both could be sentenced to years in prison.
The verdict was announced after two days of deliberations. When jurors told the judge earlier Friday afternoon that they were stuck on one of the charges, the judge told them to keep trying to reach a verdict.
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After receiving a complaint of a suspicious person on Aug. 24, 2019, police stopped McClain as he was walking home from a convenience store. After an officer said McClain reached for an officer’s gun — a claim disputed by prosecutors — another officer put him in a neck hold that rendered him temporarily unconscious. Police also had McClain pinned down before Cooper injected him with an overdose of ketamine. Cichuniec was the senior paramedic and said it was his decision to use ketamine.
Prosecutors said the paramedics did not conduct basic medical checks of McClain, such as taking his pulse, before giving him the sedative. Experts testified that the dose was too much for someone of his size — 140 pounds. Prosecutors also said the paramedics didn’t monitor McClain immediately after giving him the ketamine, but instead left him lying on the ground, which made it harder for him to breathe.
McClain’s pleading words captured on police body camera video — “I’m an introvert and I’m different” — struck a chord with activists and others around the country.
In a statement before the verdict, the victim’s mother, Sheneen McClain, said that everyone who was present during the police stop of her son displayed a lack of humanity.
“They can not blame their job training for their indifference to evil or their participation in an evil action,” she wrote. “That is completely on them. May all of their souls rot in hell when their time comes.”
Defense attorneys argued that the paramedics followed their training in giving ketamine to McClain to treat his “excited delirium,” a disputed condition that some say is unscientific and has been used to justify excessive force.
The verdicts came after a jury in Washington state cleared three police officers of all criminal charges on Thursday in the 2020 death of Manuel Ellis, a Black man who was shocked, beaten and restrained facedown on a Tacoma sidewalk as he pleaded for breath.
In the Colorado case, the prosecution said Cooper had lied to investigators to try to cover up his actions, telling detectives that McClain was actively resisting when he decided to inject him with ketamine, even though the body camera showed McClain lying on the ground unconscious. Prosecutors also disputed Cooper’s claims that McClain had tried to get away from police who were holding him down and that he’d taken McClain’s pulse as he bent down to give him the shot, which others testified they did not see.
“He’s trying to cover up the recklessness of his conduct,” Senior Assistant Atty. Gen. Jason Slothouber told jurors in closing statements.
Cichuniec, who testified along with Cooper this week, said paramedics were trained that they had to work quickly to treat excited delirium with ketamine so that patients could be taken to the hospital for treatment. He also said they were told numerous times that the sedative was safe and effective.
“We were taught that is a safe drug and it will not kill them,” he testified.
The trial against the paramedics explored largely uncharted legal territory. It is rare for medical first responders to face criminal charges, and this was the first of several recent U.S. cases in which criminal charges against medical first responders reached trial. Experts said it could set the bar for prosecutors in future cases.
Local authorities decided in 2019 against criminal charges because the coroner’s office could not determine exactly how McClain, a massage therapist, had died.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis ordered state Atty. Gen. Phil Weiser’s office to take another look at the case in 2020, and in 2021 a grand jury indicted the officers and paramedics.
The killings of McClain, Floyd and others triggered a wave of legislation to limit the use of neck holds in more than two dozen states. Colorado now tells paramedics not to give ketamine to people suspected of having supposed excited delirium, which allegedly causes increased strength. The controversial diagnosis has been associated with racial bias against Black men.
When the police stopped McClain, he was listening to music and wearing a mask that covered most of his face because he had a blood circulation disorder. The police stop quickly became physical after McClain, seemingly caught off guard, asked to be left alone. He had not been accused of committing any crime.
The officers told investigators that they took McClain down after hearing Officer Randy Roedema say, “He grabbed your gun, dude.” Roedema later said he was referring to Officer Jason Rosenblatt’s gun.
Paramedics injected McClain with ketamine as Roedema — and another officer, who was not charged — held him on the ground. McClain went into cardiac arrest en route to the hospital and died three days later.
Roedema was convicted earlier this month of the least serious charge he could’ve faced, and could be sentenced to probation or prison time.
Rosenblatt and Officer Nathan Woodyard were acquitted of all charges.
In the first two trials, the defense sought to pin the blame for McClain’s death on the paramedics. Prosecutors refuted that McClain ever tried to grab an officer’s gun, and he isn’t seen doing so in body camera video.
The city of Aurora in 2021 agreed to pay $15 million to settle a lawsuit brought by McClain’s parents.
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