DENVER (AP) — Almost five years after Elijah McClain died following a police stop in which he was put in a neck hold and injected with the powerful sedative ketamine, three of the five Denver-area responders prosecuted in the Black man’s death have been convicted.
Experts say the convictions would have been unheard of before 2020, when George Floyd’s murder sparked a nationwide reckoning over racist policing and deaths in police custody.
But McClain’s mother, Sheneen McClain, said justice has not yet been served. Previously, she has said the two acquitted Aurora police officers, as well as other firefighters and police on the scene, were complicit in her 23-year-old son’s murder and that they escaped justice.
“I’m waiting on heaven to hand down everybody’s judgment. Because I know heaven ain’t gonna miss the mark,” she told The Associated Press.
She plans to speak on Friday at a sentencing hearing in a Denver suburb, at which Jeremy Cooper, a former Aurora Fire Rescue paramedic, faces up to three years in prison. He was convicted of criminally negligent homicide in December.