Killing of Elijah McClain

2019 homicide of American man under police custody

8 min read

Elijah Jovan McClain (February 25, 1996 – August 30, 2019) was a 23-year-old black American man from Aurora, Colorado, who was killed as a result of being illegally injected with 500 mg of ketamine by paramedics after being forcibly detained by police officers. He went into cardiac arrest and died six days later in the hospital. He had been walking home from a convenience store. Three police officers and two paramedics were charged with his death. Both paramedics and one of the officers were convicted of negligent homicide. The other two officers were acquitted of all charges.

On August 24, 2019, three Aurora Police officers confronted McClain after responding to a call by an Aurora civilian about an unarmed person wearing a ski mask that looked "sketchy". The three police officers who were involved in the incident (Nathan Woodyard, Jason Rosenblatt, and Randy Roedema) all said that their body cameras were knocked off during a struggle with McClain. McClain was forcibly held to the ground with his hands cuffed behind his back, after which Woodyard twice applied a choke hold. Upon arrival paramedics Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec administered ketamine, later determined to be in excess of a therapeutic dosage, to McClain to sedate him. While on scene McClain went into cardiac arrest. Three days after arriving at the hospital, he was declared brain dead, and was removed from life support on August 30.

McClain's initial autopsy was inconclusive and the cause of death was listed as undetermined. Aurora Police officers met with the coroner before his announcement, and police investigators were also present during the autopsy. As a result of a lawsuit by several news agencies, an amended autopsy report was released in September 2022 that listed the cause of death as "complications of ketamine administration following forcible restraint".

On June 24, 2020, after massive protests in Denver and Aurora and lawmakers' requests for a new, third-party investigation into McClain's death, Colorado Governor Jared Polis announced his administration would reexamine the case. Five days later, photos were discovered that were taken in October 2019 at the site where McClain was assaulted and killed. The photos showed officers posing inappropriately and reenacting the carotid restraint used on McClain. One officer, Jaron Jones, resigned and three (Erica Marrero, Kyle Dittrich, and Jason Rosenblatt) were fired.

In February 2021, an investigative report ordered by the City Council was released. The report said that the police officers involved in McClain's death did not have the legal basis to stop, restrain, or frisk him. The report questioned the police officers' statements, criticized the medical responders' decision to inject McClain with a sedative, and admonished the police department for failing to perform a serious questioning of the officers following McClain's death.

In September 2021, the three police officers (Woodyard, Rosenblatt, and Roedema) and two paramedics (Cooper and Cichuniec) were arrested and charged through a Colorado grand jury with manslaughter and other lesser charges for the death of Elijah McClain. Nathan Woodyard was tried on October 17, 2023, and was found not guilty on November 6. Rosenblatt was acquitted of all charges against him, including reckless manslaughter and assault.

On October 12, 2023, Roedema was found guilty on charges of criminally negligent homicide and assault. He was sentenced on January 5, 2024 by District Judge Mark Warner to 14 months at the Adams County Jail in Brighton, Colorado, with possibility of work-release, plus 200 hours community service.

The trial of paramedics Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec began on November 29, 2023. On December 22, the two paramedics involved in McClain's death were found guilty of negligent homicide by a Colorado jury, which found that Peter Cichuniec's unlawful administration of drugs to McClain was a key factor in causing his death. On March 1, 2024, Cichuniec was given the mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison, and on April 26, Cooper was sentenced to four years of probation. On September 14, Cichuniec's sentence was reduced to four years probation.

Background

At the time of his death, Elijah McClain had been a massage therapist for about four years. He shared an apartment with his cousin close to the site where he was taken into police custody and subsequently died. He had never been arrested or charged with a crime. Friends and family described him as a "spiritual seeker, pacifist, oddball, vegetarian, athlete, and peacemaker who was exceedingly gentle."

McClain's mother, Sheneen, moved her family of six from Denver to Aurora to avoid gang violence. She said Elijah was home-schooled and she could see at an early age that he was "intellectually gifted, but fiercely independent". While still a teenager, he taught himself to play violin and guitar. During lunch breaks, he played his instruments at animal shelters to soothe the abandoned animals. Friends said that his gentleness with animals extended to humans as well. One of his clients recalled him as "the sweetest, purest person I have ever met. He was definitely a light in a whole lot of darkness". An acquaintance said, "I don't even think he would set a mousetrap if there was a rodent problem."

Despite widespread speculation, McClain was never formally diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum, according to his family. However, autistic Black people and their families have sometimes said that they identify with him.

Killing

On the evening of August 24, 2019, an Aurora civilian called 9-1-1 reporting a male around Billings Street and Evergreen Avenue walking south on Billings Street wearing a ski mask and flailing his arms. The caller affirmed during the call that he did not believe the person was armed and that he did not believe that anyone was in immediate danger. Friends of McClain interviewed after the incident speculated that this arm-flailing was most likely just dancing, as he is believed to have been listening to music at the time of the call. McClain was dressed warmly and was wearing a ski mask because he had a blood circulation disorder that caused him to chill easily.

According to the police report, McClain resisted when confronted by the responding police officers, and Officers Woodyard and Rosenblatt heard Officer Roedema shout "He is going for your gun!" An attorney representing McClain's family said the officers involved slammed McClain into a wall immediately after apprehending him. Roedema said that McClain "reached for and grabbed the grip of Rosenblatt's gun that was holstered". There are conflicting accounts about the officer's report that McClain had tried to grab his gun. Later accounts offered differing reports on whose gun McClain had tried to grab. There was no visual body-camera footage of McClain's alleged reach for the gun, which the officers explained by stating that all of their cameras had fallen off. However, a news source states, "But if you watch the video from about the 15-minute mark (warning: It contains violent and upsetting content), you'll see someone pick up the body camera and point it toward McClain and one of the officers before dropping it back into the grass. Around 15:34, one of the officers seems to say, 'Leave your camera there.'"

The three police officers held McClain on the ground for 15 minutes. McClain was clearly in distress while restrained, sobbing and repeatedly saying "I can't breathe". He vomited several times, for which he apologized, saying: "I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to do that, I can't breathe correctly." While McClain's arms were handcuffed behind his back, Woodyard applied a carotid control hold, which intentionally cuts off blood flow to the brain by compressing the carotid arteries in the neck, rendering McClain briefly unconscious. One officer threatened to have his police dog bite McClain as he lay handcuffed and pinned to the ground.

After McClain was restrained, more officers arrived and audio of the conversation records them saying that McClain was "acting crazy", that he was "definitely on something", and that he had attacked them with "incredible, crazy strength" when they tried to restrain him. They also said that, at one point, three officers were on top of McClain, who was 5 feet 6 inches (1.68 m) tall and weighed 140 pounds (64 kg). Paramedics injected him with 500 mg of ketamine—whereas local protocols stipulate a dose of about 320 mg to 350 mg for an individual of his weight—as a sedative for excited delirium. McClain was then transferred to the ambulance. The medic who had administered ketamine noticed McClain's chest "was not rising on its own, and he did not have a pulse." He was pronounced brain dead on August 27 and died three days later, on August 30, 2019.

The body cameras came detached from the police officer's uniforms during the encounter, but the audio can still be heard. During the recording, when one of the body cameras was still attached to an officer, another officer can be heard telling him to move his camera. The attorney representing McClain's family accused the officers of deliberately removing their body cameras to support a false allegation that McClain reached for a gun, though evidence for this wasn't found during the subsequent investigation.