Paramedics found guilty of negligent homicide in Elijah McClain’s death
Jenny Goldsberry
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Two paramedics from the city of Aurora, Colorado, have been convicted of criminally negligent homicide in the death of Elijah McClain.
In 2019, three police officers stopped and restrained McClain, 23, after being called to the scene of a convenience store where someone reported McClain was “sketchy.” The involved officers tackled McClain and put him in a chokehold until he was temporarily unconscious. Then, paramedics Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec injected him with the powerful sedative ketamine, and McClain never regained consciousness.
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Cichuniec was also convicted of one of the two second-degree assault charges against him.
The jury deliberated for two days on the actions of Cooper and Cichuniec. They were accused of giving McClain, who weighed 140 pounds at the time, too large of a dose at 500 mg. Prosecutors also alleged that the two did not perform adequate medical checks on McClain immediately before or after administering the dose.
Ketamine began as a battlefield anesthetic for soldiers before its psychedelic effects became widely known, and it entered the drug scene. By 2019, Johnson & Johnson received Food and Drug Administration approval to use a variant of it as a nasal spray. Today, medical uses of the drug are done in the presence of medical professionals.
While McClain’s cause of death was originally listed as “undetermined,” three years later, an amended autopsy found he died from complications from the administration of ketamine. The City of Aurora did not fire the paramedics until Friday night when their convictions were official.
Cichuniec has since been taken into police custody. Cooper is free on bond and awaiting a sentencing hearing on Mar. 1. Their trial was the last surrounding McClain’s case.
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Aurora Police Officer Randy Roedema was also found guilty in October of criminally negligent homicide and third-degree assault in McClain’s death. Roedema’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for Jan. 5.
The other two officers involved, Nathan Woodyard and Jason Rosenblatt, were acquitted of the charges against them.