BRIGHTON, Colo. — The trial of one current and one former Colorado police officer charged in the death of Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old Black man, began Wednesday with a prosecutor describing how the victim said, "I can't breathe," seven times as he was lying handcuffed on the ground.
“Listen to Elijah’s words,” prosecutor Jonathan Bunge said as police body camera video was played. “When Elijah is on the ground handcuffed, he’s saying over and over and over again, ‘I can’t breathe. Please help me.’”
But instead of helping him, Bunge said, Aurora Police Officer Randy Roedema and his former colleague, Jason Rosenblatt, ignored McClain's pleas for help and told arriving paramedics that he had been resisting and had "crazy strength."
Then the paramedics gave McClain a sedative "as he was drifting closer and closer to death," Bunge said in Adams County District Court.
"The sedative was the very last thing he needed at the time," Bunge said.
Roedema and Rosenblatt, the first of five people charged with McClain's death to go on trial, listened quietly as Bunge laid out the government's case after Judge Mark Warner seated a jury of seven men and seven women, including two alternates. Most of the jurors appeared to be white.
Both Roedema and Rosenblatt are each charged with one count of manslaughter and one count of criminally negligent homicide. Both men have pleaded not guilty.
In his opening statement, Roedema's lawyer, Reid Elkus, said his client wasn't on the scene when McClain was first stopped.
McClain didn't start resisting until another former Aurora police officer, Nathan Woodyard, placed a carotid hold on him, Elkus said. And it was the paramedics who diagnosed McClain with "excited delirium" and injected him with a lethal dose of ketamine, he said.
McClain died because Aurora Fire Rescue paramedic Jeremy Cooper injected too much ketamine for a man his size, Elkus said.
Rosenblatt's lawyer, Harvey Steinberg, said McClain was resisting furiously and at one point declared, "I intend to take my power back." He said Rosenblatt was "obligated" to help arrest McClain and at one point heard Roedema say McClain had "gone for" the gun of one of the officers.
McClain was unarmed when he was stopped Aug. 24, 2019, by officers responding to a report of a suspicious person wearing a ski mask and waving his arms. He was carrying a plastic bag with three cans of iced tea in his left hand and his phone in his right hand. He was listening to music on headphones and didn’t initially respond when officers called to him.
McClain, a massage therapist, suffered a heart attack while being taken to the hospital and died three days later.
Woodyard, along with Cooper and another Aurora Fire Rescue paramedic, Peter Cichuniec, are also each charged with one count of manslaughter and one count of criminally negligent homicide. They also have pleaded not guilty.
McClain’s death sparked months of protests demanding justice and police reform and set the stage for the national demonstrations that erupted the following year after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
McClain's repeated pleading that he couldn't breathe was an eerie foreshadowing of what Floyd famously said when he was pinned beneath the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer May 25, 2020.
Rosenblatt was fired in 2020 after texting “ha ha” in response to a picture sent to him by other officers, one of whom appeared to be administering a chokehold near a memorial for McClain.
Roedema remains on administrative leave without pay.
Cooper and Cichuniec are scheduled to be tried later this year after the Colorado Supreme Court on Monday denied their petitions to have their cases dismissed. They have been placed on administrative leave without pay.
Woodyard will be tried this year but a date has not been set, prosecutors said. He was fired after the incident.
The chain of events that ended with McClain fighting for his life began when three Aurora police officers stopped him as he was walking home from a gas station mini-mart.
Despite it being a warm night, McClain was wearing a mask and a long coat because of a blood condition that made him feel cold, according to his family.
Police said the officers questioned McClain and then grabbed him when one of the officers thought McClain was reaching for a holstered gun.
It was at that point that Woodyard, the lead officer at the scene, applied the carotid control hold on McClain, a type of chokehold meant to restrict blood to the brain, police have said.
Minutes later, in a video obtained by NBC News, McClain could be heard telling police, “I can’t breathe correctly.”
Paramedics called to the scene then injected McClain with the ketamine to sedate him.
Some seven minutes later, McClain did not have a pulse and went into cardiac arrest inside an ambulance, according to a report released later that year by the district attorney’s office.
The medics managed to revive McClain, but he was declared brain dead less than a week later and taken off life support.
McClain cause of death was listed as undetermined in the first 2019 autopsy report. But the amended autopsy report released almost a year ago said McClain died of complications from ketamine administration while being forcibly restrained.
CORRECTION (Sept. 21, 2023, 8:20 a.m. ET): A photo caption in a previous version of this article misstated Roedema’s position. He is still with the Aurora PD, not a former officer.
Deon J. Hampton reported from Brighton, Colo., Corky Siemaszko from New York City.
