Cops involved get away scot free
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A former Colorado paramedic has been sentenced to five years in prison in the 2019 killing of
Elijah McClain after he was stopped by Aurora police.
Peter Cichuniec was one of two paramedics
convicted of criminally negligent homicide for their roles in the 23-year-old’s death, which sparked years of protests and
changes in the law. A jury also found Cichuniec guilty of second-degree assault. The outcome marks an extremely rare instance of a paramedic being found criminally liable and facing a prison sentence for a death in police custody.
Cichuniec was facing a sentence of five to 16 years for the assault charge. The judge on Friday also issued a one-year sentence for the homicide count for him to serve at the same time.
Colorado prosecutors filed charges against Cichuniec, paramedic Jeremy Cooper and three police officers, with cases that dragged on for years. Cichuniec and Cooper were responsible for injecting McClain with a dangerous dose of ketamine, a powerful sedative, as officers held him down.
“Should there have been a better medical assessment of Elijah McClain prior to the administration of ketamine? The answer is simply yes,” the judge, Mark Warner, said before issuing his sentence. He added: “The court does not find [Cichuniec] is an ongoing risk to the public.”
On 24 August 2019, McClain, a massage therapist, was walking home from the store listening to music on his headphones when a passing driver called 911 to report a “sketchy” person who “might be a good person or a bad person”. The caller noted he did not see any weapons and did not believe anyone was in danger.……
A
review of the case solicited by the Aurora city council found that McClain had committed no crime and police had no legal basis to stop him or to use force against him.
Sheneen McClain, who sat through three lengthy trials, told the court Friday that the paramedics were “accomplices to my son’s murder” and should have cared for her son as a patient and tried to help him.
“They want to blame their inhuman actions on their inhuman training, but reality is that they could have done something simply by just saying, ‘Stop hurting my patient.’ Instead, they chose to make the situation worse for my son and implicated themselves ... They felt no need to stop the brutality that was happening to my son as he pleaded for his life.”
She said she had repeatedly watched body-camera footage to try to understand why the paramedics “did not save him”. “Elijah was unconscious for an extended amount of time when he was held down and injected with ketamine, which made sure he did not wake up.”…….
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...mcclain-death-colorado?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other