Elijah McClain: Everything you need to know about 23-year-old’s death after being restrained by police

As outrage over police brutality has erupted across the country in the wake of George Floyd’s death, a wave of fresh attention and scrutiny has been applied to older cases in which people died after encounters with the police.

One such case is that of Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old black man who died last summer after the police in Aurora, Colorado, restrained him with a chokehold that has since been banned.

McClain was walking home from a convenience store on 24 August when someone called 911, saying he “looked sketchy” and was wearing a ski mask and waving his arms.

The police arrived, and after struggling to handcuff McClain, officers brought him to the ground and used a carotid hold, which restricts blood to the brain to render someone unconscious. When medical responders arrived, after about 15 minutes, paramedics injected him with ketamine, a powerful sedative.

McClain went into cardiac arrest on the way to a hospital. He died a few days later.

McClain was a massage therapist who is said to have loved animals and who taught himself to play the guitar and the violin, according to The Cut. A photograph of McClain playing the violin for stray cats, which he believed helped soothe them, has gone viral.

A GoFundMe page created by Sheneen McClain, McClain’s mother, had raised nearly $1.5m (£1.2m) by Thursday afternoon, and more than 3 million people have signed an online petition demanding that the officers involved be taken off duty and that there be an in-depth investigation of the encounter.

It is unclear what exactly caused McClain to go into cardiac arrest.

An autopsy report by the Adams County coroner said that the cause of death was “undetermined” and that it could have been a result of natural causes, a homicide related to the carotid hold or an accident.

But while he was detained, McClain was clearly in distress. After officers restrained him on the ground, he vomited several times, for which he apologised, saying: “I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to do that, I can’t breathe correctly.”

An officer said in the body camera footage that officers had “put him out” with a carotid hold twice, “at least once successfully”, meaning McClain had lost consciousness.

When paramedics arrived, they gave him what was described as a “therapeutic” dose of ketamine; body camera footage shows that it made his body go limp when he was loaded onto a gurney.

The autopsy report, released in November, said a combination of factors could have killed McClain.

McClain was “violently struggling with officers, who were attempting to restrain him,” the report read. “Most likely the decedent’s physical exertion contributed to death. It is unclear if the officers’ actions contributed as well.”

In the report, it was also noted that McClain had chronic asthma.

In response to the autopsy report, Mari Newman, the lawyer representing McClain’s family, told Denver7 ABC: “Whatever the report says, it’s clear that if the police had not attacked Elijah McClain, he would be alive today.”

“They immediately went hands on and tackled him,” she said. “And of course the fact that all three of their body cameras fell off is something that we should all be pretty suspicious about. It makes it awfully easy for them to say whatever they want, but what we know is that they attacked him for no reason whatsoever. It was excessive force and it led to his death.”

Body camera footage, released three months after McClain’s death, shows three officers – identified by the Aurora authorities as Nathan Woodyard, Jason Rosenblatt and Randy Roedema – arriving at the scene at around 10:30pm.

One officer approached McClain, who was listening to music, and told him to stop walking. McClain stopped after several commands but said he had a right to continue towards home.

According to the camera footage, the officer responded, saying he had a right to stop McClain for looking suspicious, and grabbed him by the arms. As another officer approached, McClain can be heard saying: “I am an introvert, please respect the boundaries that I am speaking. Leave me alone.”

Although McClain had not committed a crime, officers immediately restrained him, telling him to stop resisting when he put his arms up to his chest and to “stop tensing up”. The footage shows McClain pleading with the officers to let go of him and trying to get out of their grip.

The officers eventually brought him to the ground, claiming he had reached for one of their guns while they were pinning him against a wall to handcuff him. The body camera footage does not show this, officers said, because their cameras had fallen off into the grass.

At one point, an officer tells McClain that he would use his dog on him if he did not “stop messing around”.

More officers arrived after McClain was restrained. While talking with one another, officers said that McClain was “acting crazy”, that he was “definitely on something”, and that he had attacked officers when they tried to restrain him. They also said that he had “incredible, crazy strength” and that at one point three officers were on top of him.

The autopsy report notes that McClain was 5 feet 6 inches and weighed 140 pounds.

After McClain’s death, Mr Woodyard, Mr Rosenblatt and Mr Roedema were placed on administrative leave, but they have all since been reinstated.

A few days after the autopsy report was released, Dave Young, the Adams County district attorney, announced that criminal charges would not be filed, saying there was not enough evidence the officers had broken the law when they used force on McClain.

The decision angered McClain’s family, and this spring his mother pushed lawmakers to adopt police reforms. As the case garnered more attention in recent weeks, Vanessa Wilson, the interim chief of the Aurora Police Department, announced a ban on carotid holds, like the one used on McClain.

Officers are also now required to report excessive force used by their colleagues, and to announce their intention to use deadly force before firing their weapon.

And on Thursday, governor Jared Polis of Colorado signed an executive order appointing the state’s attorney general, Phil Weiser, to re-examine the case and file charges if the facts support prosecution.

“Elijah McClain should be alive today,” Mr Polis said in a statement, “and we owe it to his family to take this step and elevate the pursuit of justice in his name to a statewide concern.”

New York Times