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. Cooper’s sentencing is scheduled for April.
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.
Judge Mark Warner described the tragic outcome of that night as “the death of a young man who was simply walking home from a convenience store.”
“I expect for most people, and certainly this court, it is impossible to un-remember the video images of Elijah McClain’s suffering in the last minutes of his young life,” Warner said before imposing the sentence.
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 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 courthouse with her fist in the air.
“I’m not OK. I never will be,” she…
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