A Colorado paramedic was sentenced Friday to five years in prison in the death of Elijah McClain, a Black pedestrian who was given a lethal dose of ketamine in 2019 after a confrontation with police.
A jury in December found Peter Cichuniec and Jeremy Cooper guilty of criminally negligent homicide. Cichuniec was also found guilty of second-degree assault through the unlawful administration of drugs.
Cichuniec was sentenced to five years in prison Friday, The Associated Press reported.
Cooper’s sentencing is scheduled for April.
Cichuniec broke down in tears as his wife, also crying, took the stand to speak on his behalf ahead of the sentencing. He continued to cry as his two sons followed with remarks.
In his own remarks, Cichuniec said it “destroys” him that he couldn’t tell McClain’s mother that that her son was OK.
On the stand, McClain’s mom, Sheneen McClain, asserted that Cichuniec should be held responsible for her son’s death. After the sentencing, she left the courtroom with her fist in the air.
Police confronted McClain, 23, in Aurora on the night of Aug. 24, 2019, after someone called them and reported a suspicious person wearing a ski mask — which McClain’s family said he regularly wore because of a blood condition that made him feel cold.
Officers eventually tackled McClain, and paramedics injected him with the powerful sedative ketamine. After he was injected, McClain had no pulse in the ambulance, and he went into cardiac arrest and died six days later, on Aug. 30.
The Adams County coroner found McClain died from “complications of ketamine administration following forcible restraint.”
An independent probe commissioned by the city of Aurora found that police had no justification to stop or use force to detain McClain and that responding paramedics sedated him with ketamine “without conducting anything more than a brief visual observation.”
“This sort of callous behavior that kills a young man … is a crime,” Sheneen McClain’s lawyer said, adding that Cichuniec knew he gave McClain too much ketamine and left him prone and vomiting for six minutes.
Cichuniec and Cooper are the last two of five first responders who were criminally charged in connection with McClain’s death.
Cooper was the medic on the call and was responsible for crew and patient safety. Cichuniec ordered the ketamine from the ambulance and Cooper injected it, according to a 2021 grand jury indictment.
Aurora police officer Randy Roedema was convicted of criminally negligent homicide and third-degree assault in October; he was sentenced in January to one year and two months in jail.
Officers Nathan Woodyard and Jason Rosenblatt were charged but acquitted by juries.
Aurora Fire Rescue made changes in the wake of McClain’s death, including re-establishing a medical branch to increase oversight of emergency procedures and incidents, in addition to a required review of the use of sedatives, Chief Alec Oughton has said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
