The mother of Elijah McClain spoke out about the sentencing of one of the Colorado paramedics who was tried and convicted in her 23-year-old son’s death.
A judge sentenced Peter Cichuniec to five years in prison, which is the minimum sentence for his criminally negligent homicide conviction. Cichuniec and his family begged and cried in court to the judge in a desperate plea for mercy, not for forgiveness.
“Minimum, the bare minimum always?” Elijah’s mother, Sheneen McClain, questioned reporters after the sentencing. “No. We deserve better, we deserve more because we are worth more.”
Cichuniec and fellow paramedic Jeremy Cooper were both found guilty of criminally negligent homicide last December for injecting McClain with a lethal dose of ketamine in 2019. Cichuniec was also found guilty of second-degree assault for administering drugs without consent.
McClain was stopped by police officers on August 24, 2019, in an Aurora suburb as he was walking home after police received a report about a suspicious-looking person. During that encounter, police forced him to the ground and handcuffed him. One officer put McClain in a chokehold that restricted oxygen flow to his brain and caused him to lose consciousness briefly.
“I’m not OK. I never will be,” Sheneen McClain told KUSA in an interview. “Everybody there that night, even the ones that did not get convicted for my son’s murder, even the ones that walked away, even the ones that stood there and watched, they’re all guilty and they’re all scum.”
Before McClain’s transport to the hospital, officers held an unconscious McClain down as Cooper gave him a 500-milligram dose of ketamine, a sedative. Cichuniec, the senior paramedic on the scene, told authorities it was his decision to administer the drug. They never asked or consulted McClain about the dose and he went into cardiac arrest and stopped breathing just a few minutes after receiving it. He died six days later.
“No matter who they want to call faulty when it’s their own actions that killed my son. They had an opportunity to save him. He was speaking, he was talking when they got there,” Sheneen McClain said. “It doesn’t make any sense for them to be so disrespectful to my son’s life.”
McClain was said to be suffering from “excited delirium” during his encounter with police, a condition that prosecutors argued neither Cooper nor Cichuniec medically evaluated him for. “Excited delirium” is a condition typically associated with drug use and “agitation, aggression, acute distress, and sudden death,” according to the Western Journal of Medicine.
However, it isn’t recognized by the American Medical Association or the American Psychiatric Association, and even the Colorado Licensing Board for Peace Officers voted to remove the term from training documents.
Cichuniec faced up to 16 years in prison on the assault charge. The five-year sentence was the minimum the judge could have given him under sentencing guidelines, according to the Associated Press. He was also sentenced to three years probation.
Cichuniec as well as his wife and two sons pleaded with the judge to give him the minimum sentence. The paramedic cried in court and told the judge he was “begging for mercy.”
“I know this won’t sound fair because Miss McClain will never have an opportunity with Elijah, but I beg of you on this sentencing day that you give me the opportunity, judge…to return to my family, to provide for them,” Cichuniec said, according to CNN.
Cooper will be scheduled to be sentenced in April.
“I’m just so glad it’s over. I can’t even imagine what Elijah experienced, you know. I can’t even imagine,” McClain said. “I’m just glad this part is over.”
Atlanta Black Star reached out to McClain’s attorney for further comment on the sentencing but has not heard back yet.
Randy Roedema was the only police officer involved in the encounter with McClain who was found guilty of criminally negligent homicide. He was sentenced to 14 months in prison and four years probation in January.
