Story at a glance:
- The five Denver police officers and medics associated with the death of Elijah McClain have been indicted.
- McClain was placed in a chokehold and injected with ketamine, an anesthetic, by Aurora police and medics.
- McClain died in 2019.
Three Aurora police officers and two paramedics were indicted by a grand jury Wednesday in connection with the 2019 death of Elijah McClain.
Aurora police officers Nathan Woodyard and Randy Roedema, former officer Jason Rosenblatt, and paramedics Jeremy Cooper and Lt. Peter Cichuniec are indicted on 32 counts, The Denver Post reported.
All five face charges of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. Officers Roedema and Rosenblatt face second-degree assault charge with intent to cause bodily injury and another count of a crime of violence related to the second-degree assault charge.
In addition, paramedics Cooper and Cichuniec face a second-degree assault with intent to cause bodily injury, with one count of second-degree assault for recklessly causing bodily injury for using ketamine as a deadly weapon. They will also receive one count of second-degree assault for unlawfully administering ketamine, an anesthetic, to McClain.
On Aug. 24, 2019, McClain was placed in a chokehold and injected with the ketamine by Aurora police and medics. The police were responding to a 911 call that McClain was wearing a face mask in a convenience store to buy ice tea, USA Today reported.
The caller did not accuse McClain of a crime.
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“I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe please. I can’t. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe, please stop,” McClain told police officers, according to body camera footage.
McClain never recovered after choking on his own vomit and having a heart attack. He died in the hospital six days after the incident.
“Nothing will bring back my son, but I am thankful that his killers will finally be held accountable,” LaWayne Mosley, the father of the vegetarian massage therapist and violin player, said Wednesday in a statement.
At the time, Aurora police union officials said officers were cleared by the initial investigation. The police union said in a statement that “nothing has changed. Our officers did nothing wrong,” USA Today reported.
“Sadly, Mr. McClain died due to a combination of exertion due to his decision to violently resist arrest and a pre-existing heart condition. The hysterical overreaction to this case has severely damaged the police department. Inevitably, the public are the ones who’ve paid the price,” the statement continued.
However, Mosley claims in a lawsuit that the department has a history of racial bias, according to USA Today. Aurora officers last summer mocked McClain’s death, according to USA Today. One of the officers who detained McClain got fired by the department after responding “haha” to pictures taken at the scene. He was not fired for being responsible for McClain’s death.
“Aurora permits and encourages a culture of racial violence in its police department that is so rampant that a trio of on-duty, uniformed Aurora police officers returned to the scene of Elijah’s killing to take pictures of themselves smiling while reenacting the chokehold performed on Elijah,” Mosely said in his lawsuit. “Under mounting public pressure, the city fired these officers, some of whom in turn have appealed those firings because their conduct was of the sort widely accepted in the Aurora Police Department for decades. Yet, the city still has not taken any steps to discipline anyone for the killing of an innocent young man.”
McClain’s mother, Sheneen, has been demanding prosecutors file criminal charges against those involved, and her demands have been shared by thousands of Black Lives Matter protesters, The Denver Post reported.
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