Second paramedic involved in Elijah McClain’s death sentenced to probation, work release and community service
CNN
Jeremy Cooper, a former paramedic in Aurora, Colorado, was sentenced to four years probation, 14 months of work release and 100 hours of community service on Friday.
Jeremy Cooper, a former paramedic in Aurora, Colorado, was sentenced to four years probation, 14 months of work release and 100 hours of community service on Friday. Cooper and another paramedic, Peter Cichuniec, were found guilty of criminally negligent homicide in December in the death of Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old Black man, who was subdued by police and injected with ketamine on August 24, 2019. Both paramedics had pleaded not guilty to the felony charges. Cichuniec was sentenced last month in a Colorado courtroom to five years in prison, the minimum. Prosecutors had argued the paramedics acted recklessly in administering a large amount of the powerful sedative ketamine to McClain, who had been violently subdued by police after they said McClain was in a state of “excited delirium.” A revised autopsy report released in 2022 listed McClain’s cause of death as “complications of ketamine administration following forcible restraint.” Cooper’s sentencing brings the case to a close, but at the hearing, McClain’s mother, Sheneen, urged the judge to hold Cooper accountable.