By Colleen Slevin, The Related Press
Attorneys will ship closing arguments Tuesday within the trial of the first two law enforcement officials to be prosecuted within the 2019 dying of Elijah McClain, a Black man who was put in a neck maintain and pinned down by officers in a Denver suburb earlier than paramedics injected him with a strong sedative.
McClain was stopped whereas strolling house from a comfort retailer on a summer season night time, listening to music and carrying a masks that coated most of his face. A 911 caller reported him as suspicious and the police cease rapidly grew to become bodily with McClain, a 23-year-old therapeutic massage therapist seemingly caught off guard, asking to be left alone. He had not been accused of committing any crime.
Prosecution witnesses testified that the sedative ketamine killed McClain. However prosecutors additionally supplied medical testimony that the restraint of McClain by Aurora officers Randy Roedema and Jason Rosenblatt triggered a collection of well being issues that made it arduous for McClain to breathe and extra susceptible to a deadly overdose.
Protection attorneys didn’t name any witnesses, as a substitute utilizing questions for prosecution witnesses to make their case that the officers didn’t trigger McClain’s dying.
Roedema and Rosenblatt are charged with manslaughter, criminally negligent murder and second-degree assault — all felonies. An assault conviction carries probably the most severe penalty, as much as 16 years in jail.
Officer Nathan Woodyard — whose trial begins Friday— was the primary to cease McClain. Inside 10 seconds, Woodyard put his fingers on McClain and turned him round. As McClain tried to flee his grip, Woodyard mentioned, “Calm down, or I’m going to have to alter this example.”
The encounter rapidly escalated, with Woodyard, Roedema and Rosenblatt taking McClain to the bottom and Woodyard placing him in a neck maintain by urgent in opposition to his carotid artery, briefly rendering him unconscious. The officers later instructed investigators they took McClain down after listening to Roedema say, “He grabbed your gun dude.”
This second could be heard however not seen on physique digicam video. The intensive video of the moments resulting in his dying have been proven repeatedly to jurors.
Two paramedics, Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec, have been additionally charged in McClain’s dying and are scheduled to go on trial in November.
The native district legal professional didn’t pursue prison fees in 2019, however the case was re-examined in 2020 after Gov. Jared Polis requested state Lawyer Basic Philip Weiser to analyze amid protests over police brutality in opposition to Black individuals following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Roedema and Woodyard are presently suspended with out pay, Rosenblatt is the one officer concerned within the incident who was fired — not for the deadly encounter itself, however for making gentle of different officers’ reenactment of the neck maintain.
