The payout will settle a 2022 lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court by the Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer law firm. The agreement was approved in a block vote.

Some of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit claimed that the city’s crowd-control policies violated their First and Fourth Amendment rights. Others alleged that they experienced excessive force used by police during the protests.

Neither attorneys for the plaintiffs nor city representatives immediately responded to a request for comment on Monday ahead of the council vote.

During the protests that bubbled up nationwide after the 2020 murder of Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, law enforcement in Denver used less-lethal weapons such as tear gas and chemical irritants, various projectiles, grenades and pepper spray, which the lawsuit said constituted excessive force.

As a result, the lawsuit said plaintiffs suffered physical and mental injuries, including burns, lost vision and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

“They want to participate in demonstrations against police brutality in the City without fear that law enforcement agents working on behalf of the City will endanger their physical safety and freedom of expression with the unjustified and indiscriminate use of ‘less-lethal’ weapons,” the lawsuit read. “Plaintiffs bring this action to seek accountability, to vindicate their constitutional rights, and to restrain local law enforcement from continuing to respond to peaceful protest with unconstitutional and indiscriminate force.”

The lawsuit had 14 plaintiffs, and Monday’s council resolution named six who were part of the new settlement: Lauren Folkerts, Joseph Gallegos, Zuri Hoskin, Huitziloxochitl Jaramillo, Debra Gehri (also known as Kelsang Virya) and Douglas Munn.

Before this payout, Denver had already approved settlements to resolve lawsuits over police actions against people protesting Floyd’s murder that amounted to nearly $15 million, as of early this year.

Glyn Hart was suicidal when he crashed into a parked car in La Junta three years ago.

He was suicidal when a police officer arrested him, suicidal when the officer took him to a hospital, and suicidal when the officer left him alone in a police holding cell for 74 minutes, wearing a hoodie with a drawstring.

Hart, 46, used that drawstring to die by suicide in his cell on the night of Nov. 1, 2021.

His children are now suing the La Junta police officer who left him there — bringing claims against the officer that are only possible because of sweeping police reform passed in 2020 that stripped Colorado law enforcement officers of qualified immunity, a legal defense that previously blocked police officers and sheriff’s deputies from being sued in their individual capacities in most cases.

But the officer who left Hart alone, Mitch Zgorzynski, says he’s still entitled to immunity despite the reform — under Colorado common law.

He argues that although the 2020 reforms stripped officers of qualified immunity under the , common law immunity — an earlier legal precedent that the immunity act essentially rendered moot when it was created five decades ago — was not affected and should now kick in.

It’s an argument that law enforcement officers have been widely testing out in the wake of the 2020 reforms, with mixed results in the courts. Civil rights attorneys say the fallback to common law is designed to keep law enforcement officers immune from civil claims despite the 2020 reforms.

“It¶¶Òõap basically qualified immunity but by another name,” said attorney Andy McNulty, who is not involved in the La Junta case. “They’re trying to shoehorn the same qualified immunity protections that Colorado legislators and citizens forcefully said should not be given to law enforcement officers in Colorado by raising these common law immunity defenses.”

The common law argument is relatively new, since lawsuits take years to work through the courts, said Spencer Bryan, attorney for Hart’s family in the La Junta case.

“It¶¶Òõap a shock to the system when the legislature comes in and redefines the landscape of what rights are available to people,” he said. “What we are seeing now is the response to that is, ‘No, we still want our immunity and we’re not going to let you have the rights the legislature said you can have.’ ”

A Boulder District Court judge last year found that common law immunity was still available to sheriff’s deputies in a . A district court magistrate in Chaffee County ruled the opposite way in April in the case of a man who claimed he was arrested by SWAT officers who used a flash-bang grenade without warning to arrest him on misdemeanor charges.

The Boulder judge found that because the Colorado Governmental Immunity Act was created in addition to — not instead of — common law immunity, the latter still exists and applies despite the 2020 reform, because the 2020 law did not explicitly wipe away common law immunity. The Chaffee County judge, by contrast, found that the 2020 law was plainly designed to prohibit both types of immunity for officers.

Neither district court decision is binding on other courts or in other cases, and the issue may ultimately need to be settled by the Colorado Supreme Court, Bryan said.

“We are just now seeing how defendants are going to try to address it, how courts are going to try to address it, and what really are the implications for the general public,” he said.

Mari Newman, an attorney who helped craft the 2020 reform, said she was surprised by the “audacity” of the common law argument when it first cropped up.

“It really is so obviously inconsistent with the law that it should just be rejected without a second thought,” she said.

The judge in Hart’s case has yet to rule on the common law immunity argument.

In court filings, Zgorzynski’s attorneys argued that Zgorzynksi believed Hart was no longer suicidal after a doctor at the hospital cleared Hart to go to the police holding facility that night. He let the man keep his hoodie because the cell was cold, the attorneys wrote. They did not return a request for comment.

“Separate and apart from qualified immunity, good faith provides law enforcement officers a common law defense of good faith,” attorney Sara Cook wrote in a motion to end the lawsuit. “Colorado has long afforded this defense to law enforcement officers.”

McNulty said lawmakers could step in while the issue continues to work through the court system.

“The whole point of this law was to make sure police officers could be held accountable in civil court for the violation of people’s constitutional rights,” he said. “…So if courts do find this frivolous argument (valid) and give officers the same protections they had with qualified immunity, there needs to be an answer from the legislature, and it needs to happen right away.”

The city is on the hunt for its sixth chief in five years as the turmoil at the top of the troubled law enforcement agency continues. Interim police chief Heather Morris announced Friday that she would not seek to be the police department’s permanent leader.

The city opened its application process for the permanent chief position on Monday and was set to stop accepting applications at the end of the day Friday, Morris wrote in an email to police employees earlier in the day.

“After thoughtful consideration, I have made the personal decision not to apply for the position,” she said in the email, which was distributed to news media by Aurora city spokesman Ryan Luby.

Morris took the helm in January from former chief Art Acevedo, who left the city after 13 months as interim chief. The two worked together in Houston and during a contentious stint in Miami before both joined the Aurora Police Department.

When she was hired as interim chief, Morris said she’d “consider it a privilege” to be the city’s permanent police chief. On Friday, she said her reasons for leaving should be “secondary” to a focus on a smooth transition to the new chief.

“I’m looking forward to assisting in any way I can with the process, and the selection of a chief who is not interim,” she said. “That is something this department needs.”

The APD has seen five different leaders in the last five years. Chief Nick Metz, who retired in 2019, was followed by Chief Vanessa Wilson, who was controversially fired in April 2022. Former Chief Dan Oates then briefly came out of retirement to head the department until Acevedo was hired on an interim basis in December 2022 following a failed hiring process to find a permanent replacement.

Aurora city manager Jason Batchelor will select the next police chief, who will then need to be approved by a majority of City Council members, Luby said in the news release.

Whoever takes the role will face several challenges, including navigating a court-ordered reform effort within the agency after the state’s attorney general found the city’s police officers routinely conducted racially biased policing and used excessive force.

Peter Cichuniec, 51, was convicted of criminally negligent homicide and assault by drugging in the 2019 killing of Elijah McClain. The 23-year-old Black man died after Aurora police put him in a neck hold and an Aurora paramedic injected him with an overdose of the sedative ketamine. Cichuniec was supervising the paramedic who injected the drug.

In March, Adams County District Court Judge Mark Warner sentenced Cichuniec to five years in prison — the mandatory minimum prison time required under Colorado law — and he is imprisoned in Sterling Correctional Facility in northeast Colorado.

But because Cichuniec was sentenced under the state’s mandatory minimum laws, he is allowed to appeal the length of the sentence on the grounds that his case involves “unusual and exceptional” circumstances — and did so, court records show.

State law allows Warner to reduce the mandatory minimum prison sentence after Cichuniec spends at least 119 days in prison and after the Colorado Department of Corrections assesses Cichuniec’s risk level and reports back to the judge.

Warner on Thursday ordered the Department of Corrections to provide that assessment in response to a “Motion to Modify and Reduce Sentence,” filed by Cichuniec, court records show. The motion itself was sealed from public view, a court clerk said.

Cichuniec is set for a hearing in Adams County District Court on Tuesday.

He was one of three first responders convicted in McClain’s death after five were arrested and tried. Former paramedic Jeremy Cooper and former Aurora police officer Randy Roedema were each convicted of criminally negligent homicide, and sentenced to 14 months of work release.

Roedema this month asked a judge to convert his work-release sentence, in which he is jailed on nights and weekends but allowed to leave for work, into home detention, citing unhealthy conditions in the jail.

Two other Aurora police officers, Jason Rosenblatt ²¹²Ô»åÌýNathan Woodyard, were acquitted by juries of all criminal charges in McClain’s death.

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BRIGHTON — Former Aurora paramedic Jeremy Cooper was sentenced Friday to 14 months of jail with work-release and four years of probation for his role in the killing of Elijah McClain nearly five years ago.

“The life of Elijah McClain mattered, and matters,” District Court Judge Mark Warner said as he imposed the sentence. “It¶¶Òõap almost unthinkable, the way things rolled out and the facts and circumstances in this case.”

Cooper, 49, was convicted of criminally negligent homicide in McClain’s death. He faced up to three years in prison. Work-release programs typically require inmates to spend nights and weekends in jail, but allow them to leave jail on weekdays to go to work.

Warner also ordered Cooper to complete 100 hours of community service. The sentence will begin June 7.

The former paramedic was the last of three first responders who were convicted of crimes in McClain’s death to be sentenced, closing a major chapter in a winding legal saga that spanned nearly half a decade.

“The only closure it brings me is that this (expletive) is over,” Sheneen McClain, Elijah’s mother, said after the sentencing. “I’m done with that.”

Cooper injected McClain with an overdose of the sedative ketamine after Aurora police officers wrongly detained McClain and put him in a neck hold in August 2019. McClain, a 23-year-old Black man who begged for help and told officers he could not breathe, lost consciousness during the arrest and never recovered. He died days later.

When Cooper spoke during the sentencing in Adams County District court Friday, he addressed his comments directly to McClain, rather than to the judge, which prompted Sheneen McClain to walk out of the courtroom in apparent disgust.

“First I want you to know how sorry I am that I couldn’t save you,” Cooper said, pausing to compose himself as Sheneen McClain and two others left the courtroom. He later added:Ìý “Elijah, I’ve heard people suggest I didn’t help you because you were Black. My god, that couldn’t be further from the truth. I did what my training required. I thought I was helping you.”

Sheneen McClain returned to the courtroom minutes after his statement and said Cooper appeared to “find no fault” in his own actions that night, and show no remorse.

“Do not say anything to me, or mention my son’s name in my presence while you enable and support an evil, careless legacy of a delusional mindset,” she said, adding later, “Jeremy Cooper did not check for my son’s pulse. Jeremy Cooper did not conduct a thorough investigation to see if my son was breathing normally. Jeremy Cooper did not interact with my son or ask how my son was doing under the weight of a monster.”

Prosecutor Jason Slothouber told Warner that Cooper was the person “singularly most responsible” for the death of Elijah McClain, and called for a sentence to prison.

Cooper’s many supporters described him as compassionate, kind and stoic during the sentencing hearing. Tarrah Cooper, Jeremy’s wife, said her husband “literally does not have a mean bone in his body,” and that he loved his work as a firefighter paramedic, through which colleagues said he saved many lives.

Tarrah Cooper said her husband came home unnerved and upset after McClain’s death, and was confused about what went wrong.

Cooper’s sentence was very similar to the sentence for now-former Aurora police Officer Randy Roedema, who was convicted of criminally negligent homicide and third-degree assault and sentenced to 14 months in jail with the option for work-release in January.

But his sentence is much shorter than fellow paramedic Peter Cichuniec, who was convicted of criminally negligent homicide and assault by drugging. Cichuniec was sentenced to five years in prison in March, because the assault conviction required he be sentenced to a mandatory-minimum prison term of five years, and did not give Warner discretion to deviate from that sentence.

Two other Aurora police officers, Jason Rosenblatt and Nathan Woodyard, were acquitted of criminal charges in McClain’s death.

McClain had committed no crime and was walking home from a convenience store while wearing a ski mask when he was stopped by officers after someone called 911 and said he appeared to be acting strange.

His death prompted thousands of people to take to the streets and protest police brutality during the summer of 2020, led the city of Aurora to pay a $15 million settlement to McClain’s parents, gave rise to court-ordered reform within the Aurora Police Department and spurred changes to state law and police training around the use of ketamine.

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BRIGHTON — An Adams County judge sentenced former Aurora paramedic Peter Cichuniec to five years in prison Friday — the mandatory minimum prison sentence he faced for his role in the killing of Elijah McClain.

A jury in December found both Cichuniec, 51, and fellow paramedic Jeremy Cooper guilty of criminally negligent homicide in McClain’s death in 2019. Cichuniec also was convicted of assault by drugging, with a sentence enhancer for causing serious injury or death.

District Court Judge Mark Warner sentenced Cichuniec to five years on the assault conviction and one year, to be served concurrently, on the homicide conviction. Cichuniec received 70 days of presentence credit because he has been in custody since the verdict.

“It is impossible to unremember the video images of Elijah McClain suffering in the last minutes of his young life,” Warner said as he imposed the sentence.

Cichuniec oversaw Cooper as he injected McClain with an overdose of the sedative ketamine after police put the 23-year-old in a neck hold in August 2019. McClain had committed no crime and was walking home from a convenience store while wearing a ski mask when he was stopped by officers because someone called 911 and said he appeared to be acting strange. Officers immediately took him to the ground.

The paramedics’ rare convictions sent shockwaves through the emergency medicine profession, with paramedics across the nation rethinking how to treat patients who are in police custody and when to use ketamine.

“I wish that I could look into Ms. McClain’s eyes and tell her Elijah would be OK,” Cichuniec said before he was sentenced Friday. “I can’t. And that destroys me as a person, as a father and as a paramedic.”

He cried while speaking in Adams County District Court and apologized for McClain’s death. He also defended his actions that night, saying that he had to make quick decisions without the full picture and did the best he could.

McClain’s mother, Sheneen McClain, said she wanted Cichuniec to be held accountable for her son’s death.

“My son’s murder was not a tragedy,” she said in court. “…My son’s murder was 100% avoidable… I have righteous anger toward those who made sure my son did not live to see another day, when they could have done better.”

More than 100 people submitted letters of support for Cichuniec to the judge, and several people spoke on his behalf in court Friday, describing Cichuniec as a dedicated public servant, family man and a compassionate and capable leader.

After the sentencing, Edward Kelly, general president of the International Association of Fire Fighters union, told reporters the criminal prosecution has had a chilling effect on the paramedic profession, a sentiment that was echoed by several of Cichuniec’s supporters in court.

“Peter Cichuniec is not a criminal and he should not be on his way to jail right now,” Kelly said.

David Goddard, Cichuniec’s attorney, argued that the case already has deterred paramedics from taking similar actions as the convictions have reverberated across the profession, and so a minimum prison sentence was appropriate for Cichuniec.

“This case has served as a brutal wake-up call to an industry that before now had perceived the civil justice system as the only remedy for medical malpractice,” he said.

On the assault conviction, Cichuniec faced a minimum five years in prison and a maximum 16-year sentence. He faced up to three years in prison on the criminally negligent homicide conviction, which is a less serious charge than assault.

He was sentenced under the state’s mandatory minimum sentencing laws, and the length of his sentence could be reconsidered in the coming months, after the Colorado Department of Corrections assesses his risk level and sends a report to the judge. Warner could reduce Cichuniec’s sentence at that point if he finds “unusual and extenuating circumstances,” state law says. Cichuniec must spend at least 119 days in prison before the sentence could be modified.

Cichuniec and Cooper were both fired after their convictions. Cichuniec alone was sentenced Friday. Cooper is scheduled to be sentenced on April 26.

Three Aurora police officers also stood trial last fall on criminal charges in connection with McClain’s death.

Now-former officer Randy Roedema was convicted of criminally negligent homicide and third-degree assault and was sentenced to 14 months in jail with the option for work-release. He has appealed that conviction.

Former officers Jason Rosenblatt ²¹²Ô»åÌýNathan Woodyard were acquitted of criminal charges.

McClain’s death prompted thousands of people to take to the streets ²¹²Ô»åÌýprotest police brutality during the summer of 2020, led the city of Aurora to pay a $15 million settlement to McClain’s parents, gave rise to court-ordered reform within the Aurora Police Department and spurred changes to state law and police training around the use of ketamine.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Corrected 4:45 a.m. March 2, 2024: This story was corrected to reflect that Cichuniec is 51.

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Randy Roedema, 37, was sentenced to 14 months in jail with the option for work release in January, after he was convicted of criminally negligent homicide and third-degree assault in McClain’s 2019 death.

The 23-year-old unarmed Black man was violently arrested by Aurora police officers and then injected with an overdose of a powerful sedative, leading to his death. McClain had committed no crime, investigators later found.

Roedema was the only one of three Aurora police officers charged in McClain’s death to be convicted — the two other officers were acquitted at trial. The two Aurora paramedics who injected McClain with the sedative were found guilty of criminally negligent homicide and are scheduled to be sentenced in March and April.

Roedema’s 10-page appeal lists nine separate issues that he would like the Court of Appeals to review, including whether he should have been separated from his co-defendant during trial, whether the original grand jury indictment was flawed, whether the jury verdict was properly supported by evidence and whether the district court judge made mistakes during the case.

The notice of appeal filed Wednesday notes that the listed issues “are not necessarily the final or complete list.”

An attorney for Roedema did not return a request for comment Thursday.

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Nathan Woodyard, 34, who put the 23-year-old McClain in a neck hold during the violent 2019 arrest, was found not guilty in November of criminally negligent homicide and reckless manslaughter in McClain’s death.

After the verdict, Woodyard requested to rejoin the police department and was owed $212,546 in back pay. He’d been suspended without pay since September 2021, when he was indicted on the criminal charges.

He could have returned to the department after completing a reintegration process, city spokesman Ryan Luby said in November. Instead, he resigned on Friday, Luby confirmed.

McClain was walking home from a gas station — wearing a black ski mask as he often did, and dancing to music — on Aug. 24, 2019, when someone called 911 to report him as a suspicious person.

The responding officers detained McClain, violently forced him to the ground and handcuffed him before paramedics injected McClain with the sedative ketamine. Woodyard used a neck hold on McClain, who had committed no crime. The 23-year-old suffered cardiac arrest on the way to the hospital, where he was later declared brain dead. He died Aug. 30, 2019.

With Woodyard’s resignation, none of the three officers charged in McClain’s death will be returning to work at the Aurora Police Department.

Officer Jason Rosenblatt, who was also acquitted of criminal charges, was fired before the jury trials for responding “ha ha” in a text to a photo of three officers reenacting the choke hold on McClain. Officer Randy Roedema was convicted of criminally negligent homicide and assault in McClain’s death, and was fired after the verdict. He was sentenced to 14 months in jail.

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AURORA — The police officers who wrestled Elijah McClain to the ground as the unarmed Black man walked home in 2019 went “hands-on” too quickly, Aurora’s interim chief of police said Thursday in an about-face from the police department’s initial stance in the case.

Interim Chief Art Acevedo, who joined the police department more than three years after McClain’s death, commented on the officers’ actions days after former Officer Randy Roedema was sentenced to 14 months in jail with the option for work-release on assault and criminally negligent homicide convictions in McClain’s death.

“We don’t want our officers to go hands-on so quickly, unless there’s an actual threat to them,” Acevedo said during a Thursday news conference.

The position is a reversal of the department’s initial stance in the McClain case, in which investigators from the and Denver Police Department cleared the officers of all wrongdoing.

Aurora police contacted 23-year-old Elijah McClain on the night of Aug. 24, 2019, after a 911 caller reported that McClain was wearing a ski mask and waving his arms as he walked. Officer Nathan Woodyard went hands-on with McClain within eight seconds of approaching him.

Woodyard, Roedema and a third officer, Jason Rosenblatt, tackled McClain to the ground. Woodyard used a chokehold on McClain, who struggled to breathe and begged for help until Aurora Fire Rescue paramedics Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec arrived and injected McClain with an overdose of ketamine, leading to his death.

“We failed Elijah McClain as a department, we failed (his mother Sheneen) McClain as a department, we failed our community as a department. We also failed the officers that encountered him that night,” Acevedo said. “…They failed because of the attitude, the mindset of: ‘You ask someone to do something, you tell someone to do something and then you make someone do something.’ If you look at the approach to Elijah McClain, we went from ‘asking’ to ‘telling’ to ‘making’ very quickly, and we should not be going hands-on and making someone do something unless there is an immediate threat. It’s tragic.”

Asked what police will do differently in similar situations going forward, Acevedo said officers should better explain their actions.

“There’s going to be a lot more talking,” he said. “It’s a consensual contact, right? We are going to discuss it, we are going to talk to him, and then if we don’t have legal cause to detain, we are training our people to get back in the car and do one of two things: leave, or just watch the person.”

An independent investigation commissioned by the city found the Aurora officers did not have a legal basis to stop or detain McClain. Acevedo said Thursday that the police department is already seeing officers better handle such situations.

“We needed to do better and thank God, as a result of that tragedy, our men and women are doing phenomenal work,” he said.

All five first responders were charged with crimes in connection with McClain’s death. Roedema and paramedics Cooper and Cichuniec were convicted. Then-officers Rosenblatt and Woodyard were acquitted. The paramedics are due to be sentenced in March.

Following the paramedics’ trial, Aurora Fire Rescue Chief Alec Oughton said he was “discouraged” by their felony convictions “for following their training and protocols in place at the time and for making discretionary decisions while taking split-second action in a dynamic environment.”

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The sole Aurora police officer convicted in Elijah McClain’s death was sentenced to 14 months in jail Friday with the option for work-release, avoiding the prison time sought by prosecutors in the high-profile case.

District Judge Mark Warner sentenced former officer Randy Roedema at the conclusion of a two-hour hearing in Adams County District Court on Friday, more than four years after McClain, an unarmed 23-year-old Black man who committed no crime, was violently arrested by Aurora police and then injected with an overdose of a powerful sedative, leading to his death.

“This is not justice,” Sheneen McClain, Elijah’s mother, said afterward. “This is not about accountability. This is a slap on the wrist.”

The 41-year-old former police officer was convicted in October of criminally negligent homicide and third-degree assault in McClain’s 2019 death. Roedema faced between one and three years in prison on the homicide conviction and up to 24 months in jail on the assault conviction.

Warner sentenced Roedema to 14 months in jail on the assault conviction and 90 days in jail on the homicide conviction. The two sentences will be served at the same time, and Roedema will be eligible for work-release during his incarceration, the judge ruled.

He must report to the Adams County Jail by March 22, the judge said, and must also complete 200 hours of community service.

Roedema did not appear to visibly react when the sentence was imposed, though people on both sides of the case cried during the sentencing hearing. His attorneys said he plans to appeal his convictions.

Warner noted that Roedema would have been eligible for parole in about 13.5 months had he been sentenced to three years in prison, the maximum sentence allowable. Prosecutors asked for prison time “up to the maximum of three years.”

“The court was shocked by what appeared to be indifference to Elijah McClain’s suffering,” said Warner, who oversaw the three criminal trials in McClain’s death over the course of several months late last year.

Sheneen McClain addressed the judge before he handed down his sentence, and said Elijah McClain “was murdered with intent and malice.”

“My son, Elijah McClain, was a healthy young man the night Randy Roedema chose to show my son the power and privilege of the boys in blue,” she said.

Roedema also addressed the judge, saying the situation that night in 2019 had a “horrible outcome that no one intended or wanted to happen.”

He did not apologize for his actions, but said he hated that “the McClain family has to go through this,” and that he frequently thought about ways the encounter could have ended differently, had other people acted in a different way.

“I cannot imagine the agony they must feel,” Roedema said of McClain’s family. “…I have taken steps to grow and do better.”

After the sentencing, Roedema left the courthouse through a side door away from members of the media gathered outside the building’s front door. He was escorted by a deputy. His attorney, Reid Elkus, declined to comment to The Denver Post.

Seventy-six people submitted letters of support for Roedema before the sentencing, court records show, and four people spoke in support of him during the hearing. They described Roedema, a former Marine who was shot in Iraq in 2007, as a family-oriented, selfless man who dedicated his life to public service, first in the military, then as a Denver sheriff’s deputy and finally as an Aurora police officer.

His defense attorneys asked that he receive only probation, not incarceration. Elkus noted that Roedema would lose $4,300 in monthly disability payments should he be sentenced to more than 60 days in jail, and argued that Roedema would face an undue risk to his personal safety should he be incarcerated, because of his former job as a police officer and the nationwide attention directed at the case.

Roedema was the only one of three Aurora police officers charged in McClain’s death to be convicted. Two Aurora paramedics also were found guilty of criminally negligent homicide. Two other officers were acquitted.

McClain was walking home on Aug. 24, 2019, when officers contacted him after a teenager called 911 and reported McClain as a suspicious person. The 23-year-old was wearing a ski mask, listening to music and waving his arms as he walked home.

Within seconds of reaching McClain, Aurora police officers threw him to the ground and violently arrested him. Roedema helped to restrain McClain and Aurora police officer Nathan Woodyard used a carotid hold on McClain, squeezing his neck to force him to lose consciousness.

McClain vomited after the neck hold and inhaled that vomit into his lungs, testimony at trial revealed. He begged the officers for help, repeatedly telling them that he could not breathe, but the officers did not give him any medical aid, instead calling for paramedics.

After McClain was subdued and handcuffed, Aurora paramedics Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec injected McClain with an overdose of the sedative ketamine, and he suffered a heart attack. He never recovered and died in the hospital days later.

Roedema, Cichuniec and Cooper were convicted. Woodyard and former officer Jason Rosenblatt were acquitted.

The two former Aurora Fire Rescue paramedics are scheduled to be sentenced March 1.

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