By EFE
Apr 27, 2024, 08:06 AM EDT
Denver – A Colorado judge imposed a sentence of four years of supervised release this Friday on paramedic Jeremy Cooper, convicted of negligent homicide for having injected a lethal dose of a painkiller in 2019 into Elijah McClain, a young African-American man who was walking back to his home. home after buying an ice cream.
Cooper, 49, of the Aurora Fire Department (east of Denver) is the third and final defendant to be sentenced in the case.
Previously, Aurora police officer Randy Roedema was sentenced to 14 months in prison. And Peter Cihuniec, a paramedic and Cooper’s partner, will spend five years in prison.
The incident began on August 24, 2019 with an anonymous tip about a “suspect with his face covered” walking near a busy intersection in Aurora. Three local police officers intercepted 23-year-old McClain. One of them took him by the arm, causing the young man to react.
The uniformed officers then forcibly subdued McClain, handcuffed him and kept him on the ground, holding his neck, until the paramedics arrived and injected him with ketamine, but with an excessive dose, which left the young man in a vegetative state almost immediately. Shortly after, on August 30, 2019, he passed away.
The initial report indicated that the cause of death was “undetermined,” sparking protests in Denver and Aurora. The case was reopened on June 25, 2020, by order of Governor Jared Polis.
The new investigations, concluded in September 2022, determined that McClain “received an intramuscular dose of ketamine higher than that recommended for his weight” and that the young man was “almost not breathing” when he was placed on a stretcher to be taken to the hospital. Additionally, investigators recovered previously unanalyzed video and photographs of the incident.
McClain’s death led to changes in Colorado laws and generated police reforms in the context of protests for racial justice after another murder, that of George Floyd. In fact, state representative Leslie Herod, the promoter of these reforms, expressed this Friday before the sentencing that McClain’s death was the “catalyst element” of these changes.
For example, police can no longer use ketamine or diagnose a person who resists arrest with “excited delirium.”
Sheneen McClain, Elijah’s mother, stated this Friday in a statement that, despite the sentences, “justice was not served” because two other Aurora police officers and another paramedic were found not guilty. But she, she said, “heaven will not be wrong in doing justice.”
Keep reading:
Two paramedics guilty of Elijah McClain’s death: they injected him with an overdose after being arrested
More than a year in prison for former police officer guilty of the death of Elijah McClain, an African-American arrested in Colorado