Colorado first responders charged with manslaughter of Elijah McClain

A group of police officers and paramedics who forcibly restrained black masseuse Elijah McClain and injected him with ketamine will appear in court for the first time today. 

The five first responders from Aurora, , are set to be tried in three separate proceedings – a move that will set up a fight between them to pinpoint who exactly caused the 23-year-old’s death.

McClain, who was unarmed, after a 911 caller reported him as being ‘sketchy’. 

Officers placed him in a chokehold and injected him with the potent sedative ketamine as he protested ‘I can’t breathe’. 

His death sparked mass demonstrations and renewed scrutiny around the use of ketamine by emergency workers. 

Police officers Nathan Woodyard and Randy Roedema, former officer Jason Rosenblatt and paramedics Jeremy Cooper and Lt.Peter Cichuniec were indicted on 32 counts including criminally negligent homicide and manslaughter. 

Cooper and Cichuniec, who both injected the ketamine, will be tried together while Rosenblatt and Roedema, who helped to restrain McClain, will appear in separate proceedings.

Woodyard, who was first on the scene and is said to have placed McClain in a chokehold, will appear by himself in a third trial.

The five responders will enter their pleas today. 

A court order from Adams County District Judge Mark Douglas Warner reads:  ‘The Court finds that under the particular facts as alleged in this case warrant severance of trials.’ 

McClain was walking down the street in the Denver suburb of Aurora on August 24, 2019, when he was approached by police. 

Authorities had been alerted to him after a 911 call had reported a man in the area who seemed ‘sketchy’ as he was wearing a ski mask on a warm night. 

McClain’s family previously said he was wearing the mask due to his anemia which meant he felt the cold more easily.

In bodycam footage from the incident, an officer can be heard saying that they were putting him in a carotid chokehold, according to the Department of Justice. 

A carotid chokehold restricts the carotid artery and cuts off blood supply to the brain. 

In the footage McClain can be heard saying ‘I can’t breathe’ before later protesting ‘I’m just different’.He vomited several times during the incident and died in hospital six days later.

The case received renewed public attention in 2020 following the death of 44-year-old black man George Floyd who uttered the same words as he was pinned to the floor by police officers. 

Inititally coroners said McClain’s cause and manner of death was ‘undetermined’.

But increasing public pressure prompted an amended autopsy report which concluded McClain would have most likely survived but for the administration of a dose of ketamine that was higher than recommended for someone his size. 

The cause of death was listed in the report as ‘complications of ketamine administration following forcible restraint’ – though it stopped short of calling the incident homicide.

In 2021 a state grand jury indicted five first responders for felony manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in addition to lesser crimes. 

McClain’s family also won $15 million in damages in a lawsuit against the City of Aurora in 2021. 

His death helped inspire a sweeping police accountability law in Colorado, a ban on chokeholds and restrictions on the use of the sedative ketamine. 

Experts in emergency medicine say prosecutions of paramedics are rare. 

However, in Illinois, two paramedics who strapped a Black man face down on a stretcher after police requested an ambulance last month have been charged with murder.