BRIGHTON, Colo. (CN) — In the final 18 minutes of his life, 23-year-old Elijah McClain told Aurora Police Officers he couldn’t breathe six times. In response, officers pinned him down and told him to stop fighting 34 times.
Then-Aurora Police Officers Randy Roedema and Jason Rosenblatt were the first to respond to a 911 call on Aug. 24, 2019, reporting a suspicious person in a ski mask. McClain, a 23-year-old massage therapist, was walking home after buying three cans of iced tea on Colfax Ave.
Rosenblatt, who applied the first of two carotid holds on McClain is on trial alongside Roedema, who used pain compliance to subdue McClain while waiting for paramedics. Prosecutors say both men ignored clear signs that McClain was suffering a medical emergency. Following closing arguments Tuesday, a jury of 12 began deliberating whether to convict the former officers of manslaughter and assault.
“Without telling him why, three officers rolled up on Mr. McClain and told him they were going to lay him down,” Duane Lyons, a prosecutor appointed by the state attorney general’s office, told the jury Tuesday.
When McClain didn’t immediately follow orders to “stop” and “relax,” officers handcuffed him and engaged him in two constructive carotid holds. Also known as a “chokehold,” or “sleeper hold,” the maneuver cuts off blood flow to the brain causing a person to black out.
On the ground, McClain told police he was an introvert and a vegetarian. “Forgive me,” McClain told the officers. “All I was trying to do was become better.”
McClain told officers he respects all life.
“The officers did not respect his life,” Lyons said. “If they had listened they would have treated Mr. McClain as a someone, not a suspect, as a person, not a perpetrator."
After inhaling his own vomit, McClain passed out at the scene, and a paramedic injected him with 500 milligrams of ketamine — more than double the recommended dose for someone of his size — 143 pounds. McClain never regained consciousness and died three days later in a hospital.
Defense attorney Don Sisson said Roedema was following his training and inflicted pain management in response to McClain’s resistance — an assertion met with quiet disagreement from attendees who filled out the gallery.
“My client, Randy Roedema, followed his training,” Sisson told the jury. “They don’t get to watch the video over and over, they have to make a split second decision in the dark of night. You heard [McClain] wouldn’t hurt a fly, but they didn’t know that.”
Sisson, who practices at Elkus & Sisson, claimed the officers were justified in using force after Roedema thought he saw McClain reach for Rosenblatt’s gun.
Prosecutors told the jury to be skeptical of the purported gun grab.
Rosenblatt’s defense attorney, Harvey Steinberg, said it didn’t matter whether McClain actually reached for the gun. “What goes through his mind,” Steinberg said of his client, “is ‘I’ve been on the force for 17 months and he says he’s going for my gun, I have to be careful so no one gets hurt.’”
Rosenblatt, Steinberg insisted, was being used as a scapegoat, and wrongly taking the blame for McClain’s death.
Both Roedema and Rosenblatt declined to testify.
Internal investigations by the Aurora Police and Fire departments initially concluded no wrongdoing had occurred and the district attorney declined to press charges. Following the 2020 George Floyd protests, Colorado activists began chanting McClain’s name at rallies. The state summoned a grand jury investigation and in September 2021 pressed charges against Roedema and Rosenblatt, as well as former officer Nathan Woodyard and paramedics Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec.
Woodyard’s trial starts Friday, while Cooper and Cichuniec are scheduled to be in court in November.
Roedema and Rosenblatt were each released on $10,000 bail in 2021. In Colorado, manslaughter charges carry two to five years in prison and a fine up to $500,000.
The jury must deliberate until it reaches a unanimous decision.
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