After three years, the autopsy report on a young man who died after being detained by suburban Denver police officers while walking home has been updated. The addition to the coroner reports now states a dose of ketamine administered by EMTs was responsible for the 23-year-old’s death.
On Friday, Sept. 23, Adams County Chief Coroner Monica Broncucia-Jordon revealed that the autopsy report for Elijah McClain had been amended to reflect the cause of death was due to “complications of ketamine administration following forcible restraint,” CNN reports.
Previously, the document listed the cause of death of the unarmed Black man, who died three years ago while in police custody, as “undetermined.”
Paramedics, responding to Aurora, Colorado, officers who had placed McClain in a carotid chokehold after wrestling him to the ground, injected him with the powerful sedative, causing him to go into cardiac arrest on the way to the hospital, where he died days later.
The new report confirms the dosage given to the massage therapist and self-taught musician was too much for his 5-foot-7, 140-pound body frame. He received a 500 mg of ketamine — a dose that would have been excessive for a 200-pound person.
Curiously, the amended autopsy report was signed a year ago, on July 17, 2021, and possibly was evidence used to indict three police officers and two paramedics connected to the case with manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, and other charges and as an undergirding for the $15 million settlement the city presented the young man’s bereaved family, stopping their civil rights lawsuit.
The settlement also included a promise for the Aurora Police Department and Aurora Fire Department to agree to a consent decree moving the agencies to do something about the pattern of racial bias that exists in the service units, as discovered by the state investigation.
Dr. Stephen Cina, who was assisted by Broncucia-Jordan when drafting the report, wrote that the coroner’s office received additional information regarding that tragic night that was not previously available in 2019 when the original report was completed. The office reviewed body camera footage, witness statements, and additional records from that August night, discovery that made its way to the public via the grand jury’s investigation.
Cina stated, “Simply put, this dosage of ketamine was too much for this individual and it resulted in an overdose, even though the blood ketamine level was consistent with a ‘therapeutic’ concentration.”
“I believe that Mr. McClain would most likely be alive but for the administration of ketamine,” the pathologist added.
He also added, after reviewing the body-camera footage, the African-American was “alive and responsive to painful stimuli” up until he received the ketamine shot. Then he became “extremely sedated” within minutes of being injected, and that he believes he was struggling to breathe even when he was placed on the stretcher by the emergency professionals— noting respiratory arrest was “imminent” under those conditions.
“It is my opinion that he likely would have recovered if he did not receive this injection,” he said.
Even with the new information, he still believes the manner of death is “undetermined,” stating, “I acknowledge that other reasonable forensic pathologists who have trained in other places may have their philosophy regarding deaths in custody and that they may consider the manner of death in this type of case to be either HOMICIDE or ACCIDENT.”
The doctor struggled mostly in trying to determine how much, if any, the carotid hold officers used to subdue him during detainment contributed to McClain’s death.
“I have seen no evidence that injuries inflicted by the police contributed to death,” he wrote.
The amended autopsy report was released after the coroner’s office successfully submitted an emergency motion to a Denver District Court judge for it to be made public.
The Washington Post received an email from an Aurora police representative who said the force “fully cooperated with the investigation,” but did not receive a timely response from the emergency services department.
On Aug. 24, 2019, McClain was stopped and apprehended by officers Nathan Woodyard, Randy Roedema, and Jason Rosenblatt while he was on his way home from the store. The police were responding to a 911 call complaining about a suspicious man wearing a ski mask walking through the neighborhood.
McClain, who was wearing the ski mask to keep himself warm, countering his anemia, was stopped by the cops who suspected him to be the person in question. They handcuffed him, but he resisted, pleading that he was not the person they were looking for. In an attempt to restrain him, the officers placed him in a chokehold, ignoring his cries and insistence he didn’t do anything wrong.
The violinist was captured on officers’ bodycam saying during the altercation, “I was just going home. I’m just different, I’m just different, that’s all, that’s all I was doing. I’m so sorry.”
Paramedics Peter Cichuniec and Jeremy Cooper were called to the scene and officers told them he was suffering from “excited delirium.” The two responded by injecting him with the drug, which prompted the cardiac arrest. Later that day, he was declared brain dead, dying three days later after being taken off of life support.
While this happened before the 2020 summer of unrest, where months of demonstration protested the killing of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and others who died because of police-involved violence or systemic racial prejudice, McClain’s death has been included with the Black Lives Matter battle cry.
Many claim he was racially profiled by officers, and that the condition “excited delirium” is actually “a supposed state of hyper-agitation often used by police to describe Black suspects during police interactions,” Vice.com reports.
One of the reform changes recommended by Colorado’s Department of Public Health is to change how ketamine is used by paramedics, creating a dosing standard based on patient body weight, when it should and should not be used, and making sure the EMTs monitor cardiac and respiratory activity after administering the powerful drug.
On Monday, July 18, Judge Priscilla Loew from the 17th Judicial District ruled that Woodyard, Roedema, Rosenblatt, Cichuniec, and Cooper should be tried in court on a combined 32 counts for their involvement with McClain’s death.
