Closing arguments set in final trial of first responders charged in Eljah McClain’s death
DENVER (AP) — Closing arguments are scheduled Wednesday in the final trial of first responders prosecuted in the death of Elijah McClain.
The 23-year-old Black man died in 2019 after being stopped and forcibly restrained by police officers in the Denver suburb of Aurora and then injected with an overdose of ketamine, a sedative, by paramedics.
The officers already have gone to trial and two were acquitted, including one who has since returned to work for the Aurora Police Department. The third officer was convicted of criminally negligent homicide and third-degree assault.
Aurora Fire Department paramedics Jeremy Cooper and Lt. Peter Cichuniec are being tried for manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and assault.
The defense has argued that Cooper and Cichuniec followed their training in giving ketamine to McClain after diagnosing him with “excited delirium,” a disputed condition some say is unscientific and has been used to justify excessive force. Paramedics in Aurora had been trained to use the drug for the condition in 2018 but state officials have since told paramedics to stop using using excited delirium as a basis for administering ketamine.
Prosecutors claim the paramedics did not follow their training, failing to do basic medical checks of McClain such as taking his pulse before giving him the ketamine. They also said that it was a dose that was too much for someone of his size — 140 pounds (64 kilograms).
Cichuniec, who testified along with Cooper this week, said paramedics were trained that they had to work quickly to treat excited delirium with ketamine so that patients could be taken to the hospital for treatment. He also said they were told numerous times that it was a safe, effective drug and were not warned about the possibility of it killing anyone.
“We were taught that is a safe drug and it will not kill them,” he testified.
The defense has also said there was not much the paramedics could do while police had McClain pinned down, with an officer slamming him to the ground at one point.
After being injected with ketamine and put in an ambulance, McClain, a massage therapist, went into cardiac arrest. He was pronounced dead three days later.
Initially no one was charged in McClain’s death because the coroner’s office could not determine how he died. But social justice protests over the 2020 murder of George Floyd drew renewed attention to McClain’s case — which led to the 2021 indictment of the police officers and paramedics.