Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old Black man, was forcibly detained by police in Aurora Colorado while walking home from a local supermarket following a 911 call that his behavior was ‘sketchy.’ McClain was a self-taught musician who worked as a massage therapist.
What happened: It was August 2019. Protests spread from Colorado to across the country as details of McClain’s unwarranted detention and death became public. His family, friends and clients joined a chorus of support for a man who was referred to as gentle and introverted with no arrest record. In fact, the police who stopped him said at the time that he was polite until he became agitated at not understanding why he was being detained.
