Police, medics indicted in Colorado man’s death

Elijah McClain, 23, died after officers put him in a chokehold and paramedics injected him with a sedative. A grand jury charged three police officers and two fire department responders with manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in McClain’s death, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser announced Wednesday. According to the indictment, police responding to a 911 call about a suspicious person confronted McClain on Aug. 24, 2019, in Aurora, Colo., as he walked home from a grocery store. The encounter escalated, with officers stating McClain reached for one of their guns and three of them restrained him. Paramedics who arrived miscalculated the appropriate dose of the powerful sedative ketamine and gave him more than his weight called for, the indictment said. He became unconscious and later died at the hospital.

What have investigators learned? A city review found no evidence to justify officers stopping McClain. Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, ordered Weiser to conduct an investigation after a local district attorney declined to prosecute because an autopsy could not determine how McClain died. Marc Sears, president of Aurora’s branch of the Fraternal Order of Police, told the Sentinel Colorado newspaper that “our officers are innocent until proven guilty, and we stand by our brothers.”

Dig deeper: Read Sophia Lee’s report on the long-term effect of racial protests and riots on two Pacific Northwest cities.