Colorado officer who confronted Elijah McClain found guilty of criminally negligent homicide

A Colorado jury convicted Thursday one of two officers charged in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain, a Black pedestrian who was put in a chokehold and injected with a powerful sedative, and acquitted the other officer.

The jury convicted Aurora Police Officer Randy Roedema of criminally negligent homicide and third-degree assault.

Former Aurora officer Jason Rosenblatt was acquitted. Both officers had been charged with reckless manslaughter, as well as the lesser charge of criminally negligent homicide, and assault.

Roedema had been suspended without pay while Rosenblatt was fired in 2020 after responding “ha ha” to a picture texted to him by other officers, one of whom appeared to be administering a chokehold near a memorial for McClain.

McClain, 23, had just purchased iced tea from a corner store in Aurora on the night of Aug. 24, 2019, when he was stopped by police. Officers were responding to a report of a suspicious person wearing a ski mask and waving his arms.

McClain regularly wore a mask because of a blood disorder that made him feel cold, his family has said.

When officers told McClain to stop, the young man said he was an introvert and said “please respect the boundaries that I am speaking,” bodycam video of the confrontation showed.

Officers questioned McClain before they tackled him, believing he was reaching for one of their guns, police said. There’s been no evidence showing McClain, who was not armed, attempted take one of the guns.

Officer Nathan Woodyard, set to go on trial this week, then put McClain in a chokehold that forced him into unconsciousness, prosecutors have said. He was fired after the incident.

A pair of responding paramedics, also set for trial later this year, injected McClain with ketamine to sedate him after police video showed him writhing on the ground saying, “I can’t breathe, please,” and throwing up. He apologized for vomiting

Minutes later, McClain was found to have no pulse in the ambulance and went into cardiac arrest, according to a report released in fall of 2019 by a local prosecutor, Dave Young.

McClain was revived but later declared brain dead and then taken off life support. He died on Aug. 30.

The deadly confrontation sparked months of protests against police brutality in Colorado, preceding the national demonstrations that erupted in response to the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020.

Adams County prosecutors initially opted against charging the police and paramedics, but Colorado’s attorney general intervened and secured indictments against those involved.

An independent probe commissioned by the city of Aurora released in 2021 found that officers had no legal basis for detaining McClain and that paramedics on the scene sedated the 5-foot-6, 140-pound young man “without conducting anything more than a brief visual observation.”