Two Colorado paramedics were convicted of criminally negligent homicide in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain, a young unarmed Black man whose case drew national attention and forced public safety reforms in the city where he lived and died.
A mostly white jury found the paramedics, Peter Cichuniec and Jeremy Cooper, guilty of a more serious charge they faced. But the jury split on two lesser assault charges: They cleared Mr. Cooper of both assault charges, but convicted Mr. Cichuniec of one of those charges, second-degree assault for the unlawful administration of drugs.
The men had injected Mr. McClain with the powerful sedative ketamine while he was in police custody in Aurora, Colo., which doctors said left him near death. He died days later in the hospital.
The trial was a rare prosecution of paramedics, and raised the question of the role that medical personnel play in police encounters and whether they could be held criminally responsible for their actions.
I do think that may have helped in this situation. In a more broad sense my point is I would be disappointed if a paramedic didn’t do something to stop someone from dying. We don’t have to agree on the administration of sedatives but I’d rather me or my family be sedated and transported to the hospital instead of situations continuing to escalate while fighting with law enforcement that may lead to someone being killed.
To be clear, I don’t know the full details of this specific case, as I said in my original comment, there isn’t a reason I can think of for the medics not monitoring capnography, that’s industry standard as it will show in real time when someone stops breathing and allow us to take over. If the paramedics did not monitor capnography and the patient died then that is most likely negligence that resulted in someone’s death which is unacceptable. However if they did everything appropriately and recognized the change in condition and addressed it and the patient still died then then it’s hard to fault them, apart from giving the incorrect dose of ketamine, tho just giving an extra 200mg of ketamine will not cause someone to die but it can cause unwanted side effect that if unrecognized or untreated could lead to someone’s death.
This situation isn’t really about the paramedics or if sedation is a good practice. The cops never should have touched the victim. There was literally nothing going on; he was walking down the street minding his own business and the cops attacked him and caused all of this. The Aurora PD are a bunch of drunken thugs (I live where this happened). Some of the Aurora PD members took a selfie mocking the murder at the site of the murder. They get busted for being drunk at work with shocking regularity, and there are rarely any consequences. Here’s one of their more stellar members: https://kdvr.com/news/local/aurora-officer-found-drunk-passed-out-in-patrol-car-3-years-ago-gets-promoted/
I am agreeing with you. I don’t have much else to say on that topic because we agree. My job forces me work around law enforcement but I sure as hell don’t enjoy it and separating the subject from work I have zero trust for or desire to be around them.
However the title of this post is “Paramedics Found Guilty in Last Trial in Elijah McClain Death”. So my comments more go to the topic of the paramedics because I am a paramedic and I’ve been in these situations, law enforcement does shitty things and I have to make decisions based on what they tell me and what I see, they might be lying to me but I have to document what they told me, not if I believe them or not. In that context I’m going to elect to sedate and take the person into my care and out of custody of law enforcement as soon as possible because I don’t want anyone to be harmed by law enforcement (well I don’t want anyone harmed at all but this is in context of law enforcement). But law enforcement escalating a situation is something I have no control over, it would be a hell of a lot easier to give them some benzos to chill the fuck out than it is for me to sedate someone and have to potentially takeover their airway if they have any sort of reaction to the sedation.