“Last year, we stood on the steps of the city center demanding an investigation and what do we hear then? Crickets,” a McClain family attorney, Mari Newman, told CNN’s Don Lemon on Thursday.
“Why did it take nearly a year, international media attention, millions of people who signed a petition for a responsible adult to finally step forward and do what should have happened from the beginning?” Newman said.
Attorney General Phil Weiser will now investigate the death of Elijah McClain by order of the Governor. The city of Aurora, a Denver suburb, is planning a separate investigation into the actions of first responders in the case.
McClain’s arrest and subsequent death
On August 24, 2019, McClain was detained by three white officers as he was walking home from a convenience store, after a 911 caller described a “suspicious person,” according to a police description of the incident. McClain resisted contact with officers, the report says, and a fight ensued. In one of the officers’ body cameras, McClain is heard saying, “I am an introvert, respect the limits I am talking about.”
The Bodycam video shows McClain telling officers that he was trying to stop his music to listen to them, then they begin to arrest him. An officer is heard saying to another, “He just grabbed your gun, buddy.”
The video shows an officer fighting McClain on the ground.
At one point during the fight, an officer is heard saying to McClain, “If you keep playing, I’m going to take my dog out and he will bite you.”
An officer placed McClain in a carotid hold, or strangler, and passed out briefly, according to a general description of the incident provided by police. They released the hold, the report says, and he started fighting again. When paramedics arrived on the scene, they administered the drug ketamine to sedate McClain, according to the report. According to a letter from the district attorney, McClain suffered a heart attack while in the ambulance, and was declared brain dead three days later.
An autopsy did not determine the cause of death, but listed intense physical exertion and a narrow left coronary artery as contributing factors, according to the police summary. The coroner found that the amount of ketamine in his system is a therapeutic amount.
In February of this year, a police review board stated: “
