On Friday, a paramedic was found guilty of criminally negligent homicide in the death of Elijah McClain.
Aurora Fire Rescue paramedic Jeremy Cooper stood above the slight 23-year-old man as he lay face down in the grass, a policeman’s knee in his back, wrists handcuffed and pulled high behind him.
A jury in October 2023 found one Aurora officer guilty of criminally negligent homicide for third-degree assault and another officer not guilty for his role in the death. A third officer was acquitted in November 2023. in his 35 years of practice, Dr. Steven Zeichner, the immediate past president of the Colorado Society of Anesthesiologists, had never given a dose of ketamine as large as was administered to McClain.
“I think perhaps, not only in Colorado but across the country, we have become way too focused on a particular medication and not focused enough on the broader question,” says Dr. Brent Myers, chief medical officer at ESO Solutions and past president of the National Association of EMS Physicians. Aurora Fire personnel arrived five minutes after officers radioed for backup, knowing only what they had been told by dispatchers: There was a “man running around in a mask … not making sense, waving his arms at cars and people,” they later told investigators.
“Simply put, this dosage of ketamine was too much for this individual and it resulted in an overdose,” Dr. Stephen J. Cina said in his autopsy report on McClain. “I believe Mr. McClain would most likely be alive but for the administration of ketamine.” Investigators examined ketamine administration by Aurora Fire Rescue from January 2019 to September 2020 and discovered that paramedics were giving amounts of the medication that exceeded maximum limits and, in some instances, the sedative was given at the request of police officers without paramedics assessing the patient themselves.
According to their report, one of the most concerning findings was that although the weights were not recorded on the care reports, Aurora Fire reported weights for those patients to the Department of Public Health. “There will still be times when chemical restraint is still needed to assess, treat, and transport patients,” Polis said at the time. “But, that should only occur when patients…prevent EMS providers from safely assessing, treating, and transporting the to a hospital, and not for matters relating to any criminal behavior or other circumstances not pertaining to the medical emergency.”
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