A paramedic who injected Elijah McClain with a fatal overdose of a sedative after police put him in a chokehold has been sentenced to five years in prison.
Paramedics Peter Cichuniec and Jeremy Cooper were found guilty in December of criminally negligent homicide.
Peter Cichuniec was sentenced on Friday, and Cooper will learn his punishment at a hearing in April.
The 2019 killing of the 23-year-old black man initially received little attention from the public.
But it faced fresh scrutiny a year later after George Floyd’s death in Minnesota sparked nationwide racial justice protests against police brutality.
Cichuniec, 51, was also convicted of second-degree assault for making the decision to inject McClain with ketamine, a powerful sedative.
McClain, a massage therapist, had been walking home from a convenience store when he was stopped by three police officers from the Denver suburb of…
