A Colorado jury on Friday found two paramedics guilty of criminally negligent homicide in the death of Elijah McClain near his home in Aurora. The 23-year-old Black man was walking home in 2019 when he was confronted by police officers who forcibly restrained him and then the Aurora Fire Rescue paramedics – Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec – injected him with ketamine.
He went into cardiac arrest in an ambulance a few minutes later and died three days later.
Their defense was that it was part of their training that they should give ketamine to “excited delirium” patients and that they were taught it can’t kill somebody. I didn’t get any reason as to why they would diagnose an unconscious man as having “excited delirium”.