Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser announced Wednesday a 32-count indictment against officers and paramedics involved in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain, CBS News reports.
According to NBC News, five defendants will be charged with one count each of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide: Police officers Nathan Woodyard and Randy Roedema; former officer Jason Rosenblatt; and paramedics Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec.
In addition to the manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide charges, Cooper and Cichuniec also face a pair of charges for injecting McClain with ketamine; One count of second-degree assault with intent to cause bodily injury and caused bodily injury; and one count of second-degree assault for recklessly causing serious injury by means of a deadly weapon—ketamine.
The news arrives just two years after McClain died as a result of being put in a chokehold by Aurora police and injected with ketamine. The 23-year-old Black man went into cardiac arrest while being transported to a hospital, and was later declared brain dead. He was taken off life support on Aug. 30, 2019.
Last summer, McClain’s parents filed a lawsuit against the Aurora Police Department, alleging that their son died as a result of the officers’ use of a carotid chokehold, which stopped the flow of blood to the brain and ultimately rendered McClain unconscious, combined with the effects of the ketamine injection.
“We have filed this civil rights lawsuit to demand justice for Elijah McClain, to hold accountable the Aurora officials, police officers, and paramedics responsible for his murder, and to force the City of Aurora to change its longstanding pattern of brutal and racist policing,” the family said in a statement in August 2020.
