Elijah McClain death: Colorado officer Randy Roedema sentenced to 14 months in prison for 2019 killing of Black man

AURORA, COLORADO: A former Colorado police officer was sentenced to 14 months in prison for his involvement in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain, a young Black man who was given a strong tranquilizer by paramedics and violently restrained by police while not being suspected of any crimes.

A jury in October found 41-year-old former Aurora police officer Randy Roedema guilty of third-degree assault and criminally negligent homicide. Roedema faced up to three years in prison.

In a joint trial, the same jury found 35-year-old Jason Rosenblatt, a fellow police officer, not guilty.

Randy Roedema sentenced to 14 months in prison

Roedema received a 14-month prison sentence from Judge Mark Warner for the third-degree assault conviction. In addition, the judge mandated that the assault sentence be served concurrently with four years of probation and ninety days of jail time for criminally negligent homicide, Times Now reported.

Roedema was not brought into custody right away. He can turn himself in to the Adams County jail by March 22. Warner stated before imposing the sentence, "The court was shocked by what appeared to be really indifference to Elijah McClain’s suffering."

Sheneen McClain, the mother of the 23-year-old, addressed the judge prior to the announcement of the sentence. She claimed that she searched for any indication of remorse as she watched the trials of the individuals who killed her son.

“I have found none,” she said. “I have listened to the trials to see if I could hear it in their voices, but instead I only heard lies and blaming others for their trained cruelty.”

In court on Friday, Roedema offered the McClain family his condolences. He claimed he was acting in accordance with his training and did not offer an apology for Elijah McClain's death.

“I cannot help but contemplate all the different scenarios that could have taken place that evening that may have resulted in a different outcome,” Roedema told the court. “For example, I wish that a bystander would not have made that (911) call.”

Roedema's statement revealed "no acknowledgement of his intent to harm Mr McClain through pain, no acknowledgement of his gross deviations from his training – in fact, quite the opposite,” prosecutor Jason Slothouber informed the judge.

In all, three trials were held in relation to McClain's death. Officer Nathan Woodyard, 34, of Aurora police was found not guilty of manslaughter in November after a retrial.

In the third trial, which took place last month, paramedics Peter Cichuniec, 51, and Jeremy Cooper, 49, were found guilty of criminally negligent homicide. They will receive a sentence on March 1.

Police arrested Elijah McClain for suspicious behavior

Following a bystander's 911 report of a suspicious man acting suspiciously on a warm night while wearing a winter coat and ski mask, police approached McClain as he was walking home from a convenience store.

Shortly after stopping the young man, police grabbed him and at least twice placed him in a carotid chokehold. He repeatedly told officers he could not breathe and puked into his ski mask, according to New York Post.

Defense lawyers played body camera footage from Roedema and Rosenblatt's trial, during which Roedema is heard screaming that McClain attempted to take Rosenblatt's gun. After that, the police took much more drastic measures.

Throughout the trial, the prosecution claimed that Roedema was lying or misrepresenting the facts because there was no video evidence of a gun grab. The initial 2019 autopsy revealed that the cause of death was "undetermined."

McClain died as a result of "complications of ketamine administration following forcible restraint," according to an updated autopsy report published in 2021. At first, local prosecutors decided not to press charges.

After George Floyd, a Black man, was killed by Minneapolis police in May 2020, things changed. In June 2020, Colorado Governor Jared Polis requested that McClain's case be looked into by the state attorney general's office. The officers and paramedics were charged in 2021 by a state grand jury.