A Colorado grand jury has indicted three officers and two paramedics in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old Black man who was walking home from a convenience store when Aurora police put him in a chokehold and injected with a powerful sedative. He died days later.
A 911 caller had spotted McClain, who was wearing an open-face ski mask in August, and described him as “suspicious.”
“Mr. McClain was unarmed and had not been suspected of committing any crime. As officers used force to subdue him, Mr. McClain repeatedly apologized to the officers and said he could not breathe,” reports The New York Times.
McClain’s family later explained that he was was anemic and often cold, hence the mask.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser revealed the 32-count indictment Wednesday morning, saying “Our goal is to seek justice for Elijah McClain, for his family and his friends.”
“He was a son, a nephew, a brother, a friend. When he died he was only 23 years old,” Weiser added. “He had his whole life ahead of him. His family and his friends must now go on and live without him.”
Weiser announced that Officers Randy Roedema, Nathan Woodyard and Jason Rosenblatt and fire department paramedic Jeremy Cooper and fire Lt. Peter Cichuniec were all charged with manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.
The officers claim McClain reached for one of their guns.
Rosenblatt was fired from the Aurora police department last year after he posed in a photo mimicking the chokehold that killed McClain.
Body camera footage from the incident is incomplete – the cameras fell off as officers attempted to subdued McClain. But audio reveals that McClain vomited, sobbed, and begged for mercy.
“I’m just different. I’m just different, that’s all. That’s all I was doing. I’m so sorry. I have no gun. I don’t do that stuff. I don’t do any fighting. Why were you attacking me? I don’t do guns. I don’t even kill flies. I don’t eat meat. … I am a vegetarian,” he said.
The Associated Press describes what happened next:
Paramedics arrived and injected the 140-pound (63.5-kilogram) McClain with 500 milligrams of ketamine — more than 1 1/2 times the dose for his weight. The fire department is allowed to use the drug to sedate combative or aggressive people, but there’s a lack of police training, conflicting medical standards and nonexistent protocols that have resulted in hospitalizations and even deaths when it’s used during police encounters.
According to a lawsuit filed by McClain’s family, he stopped breathing within minutes and was taken off life support days later.
CNN adds this context:
In the wake of his death, no charges were brought against the officers because, District Attorney Dave Young wrote last year, prosecutors lacked evidence to prove the officers caused McClain’s death or that their force was unjustified.
But the case gained renewed attention last June after the police killings of George Floyd and Breanna Taylor and mass Black Lives Matter protests. Spurred by those protests, Gov. Jared Polis announced a reexamination of the case last year, and Weiser opened a grand jury investigation into the case in January.
Elijah’s mother, Sheneen McClain, “is overwhelmed emotionally by [today’s indictments] and appreciates the hard work of Phil Weiser and the rest of his team. There is not a day that goes by that she does not think of her son Elijah,” according to a statement from her lawyer, Qusair Mohamedbhai.