Two Colorado paramedics have been convicted of criminally negligent homicide in the death of Elijah McClain after he was stopped by police in 2019.
The jury’s guilty verdicts on Friday for Aurora EMTs Peter Cichuniec and Jeremy Cooper mark an extraordinarily rare case of paramedics being found criminally liable for a civilian’s death in police custody and follow years of protests. Cichuniec was also found guilty of second-degree assault. Cooper was acquitted on the assault charges.
Cichuniec and Cooper, along with three police officers, had all faced criminal prosecution for their roles in the killing of McClain. The 23-year-old was stopped on a walk home on 24 August 2019, and became unconscious as he was held down by multiple officers before the paramedics arrived and injected him with a dangerously high dose of ketamine. The death of McClain, a massage therapist who was seen on body-camera footage pleading for his life in his final moments, sparked national outrage.
In court, attorneys for the paramedics sought to blame the police for McClain’s death, while lawyers for the officers had argued in two earlier trials that the paramedics’ administration of ketamine, a powerful sedative, was the cause.
The incident began when a driver passing McClain called 911 to report a “sketchy” person who “might be a good person or a bad person”. The caller said he was not in danger and saw no weapons, but noted McClain was wearing a ski mask, which his mother later said he used to keep warm due to being anemic.
Footage showed the officers aggressively approaching McClain, telling him he was “being suspicious” and quickly forcing him to the ground and placing him in a neck hold. He repeatedly said “I can’t breathe” and vomited and lost consciousness before awakening.
Cichuniec and Cooper arrived after McClain was restrained and saw the officers use force and push him to the ground, but did not check on him, prosecutors said. “We’ll just leave him there until the ambulance gets here and we’ll just put him down on the gurney,” Cooper initially said to police.
But after roughly two minutes on the scene, and without checking McClain’s vitals or talking to him, the paramedics concluded he was suffering from “excited delirium”, a pseudoscientific diagnosis that has faced widespread scrutiny in recent years. The term, which is not recognized by major medical associations, suggests that people can develop “superhuman strength” after using certain drugs, and it has been repeatedly cited to justify deaths at the hands of police, especially Black men. California recently outlawed the term.
Officers on the scene had said that McClain had “incredible strength” and falsely accused him of being “on something”.
Cichuniec ordered ketamine from the ambulance, and Cooper injected McClain as officers restrained him. Cooper said he estimated McClain’s weight to be roughly 200lbs and administered 500mg of ketamine, about 50mg over the recommended dose for that weight. But Cooper’s estimation of McClain’s size was also dramatically wrong – he weighed around 143lbs, at which 325mg would have been the appropriate dose. Soon after the injection, McClain was unconscious again and showing signs of overdose. He never regained consciousness.
The coroner’s office initially said the cause of death could not be determined, but later revised the autopsy to say McClain died from “complications of ketamine administration following forcible restraint”.
One of the Aurora officers, Randy Roedema, was convicted of criminally negligent homicide and third-degree assault in the first trial in October. Two other officers were acquitted, including Nathan Woodyard, who had first stopped McClain and placed him in a neck hold. Woodyard was recently reinstated and will get $200,000 in back pay from his unpaid suspension during the trial.
