Paramedic convicted in Elijah McClain's death set to be released from prison after judge modifies sentence

A judge in Colorado on Friday modified the five-year prison sentence for a paramedic who was convicted in the death of Elijah McClain to four years' probation.

McClain was given a lethal dose of ketamine in 2019 after a confrontation with police.

Peter Cichuniec, 51, was sentenced earlier this year after he was found guilty of criminally negligent homicide in the death of the Black pedestrian. Cichuniec was also found guilty of second-degree assault.

Judge Mark Warner ordered the sentence reduction Friday, saying, "The court finds really there are unusual and extenuating circumstances and they are truly exceptional in this particular case,” according to The Denver Post.

Attorney General Philip Weiser argued in a court filing against the reduced sentence, that not only did the decision to reduce Cichuniec’s sentence undermine the jury’s verdict, but unlike other codefendants, Cichuniec, who was the highest-ranked paramedic on scene, knew he was injecting McClain with a lethal dose of ketamine.

“No other codefendant admitted to knowingly overdosing the victim for an improper purpose, and no other codefendant was convicted of second-degree assault as a crime of violence,” a filing opposing the modification said.

The filing also indicated McClain’s mother was against the move.

A lawyer representing Cichuniec did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday night.

Police confronted McClain, 23, in Aurora on Aug. 24, 2019, after someone reported a suspicious person wearing a ski mask — which McClain’s family said he regularly wore because of a blood condition that made him feel cold.

Officers tackled McClain, and paramedics injected him with ketamine. After he was injected, McClain had no pulse in the ambulance, and he went into cardiac arrest and died six days later.

A second paramedic, Jeremy Cooper, was also found guilty of criminally negligent homicide. He was sentenced in April to four years' probation for his role in McClain's death.

Colorado's attorney general said he was disappointed that the judge had modified Cichuniec's sentence to probation.

“After considering the evidence, a statewide grand jury indicted Cichuniec and a jury of his peers found him guilty of his criminal acts that led to the death of Elijah McClain," Weiser said in a statement Friday. "We are disappointed the court reduced his sentence today, but we respect the court’s decision.”

When Cichuniec was sentenced March 1, Sheneen McClain, Elijah's mother, said that the paramedic should be held responsible for her son’s death. She left the courthouse after he was sentenced to five years in prison with her fist in the air.

“I’m not OK. I never will be,” she said then, adding that the paramedics "had the opportunity to save him."

According to the AG's filing, a state law allows a reduced sentence after a prisoner has spent at least 119 days in the Department of Corrections. The provision, sometimes referred to as the “escape hatch,” had been used only 203 times to modify sentences between 1977 and June 2024.

The law was deemed “exceptionally rare” and had only been used 22 times since its inception in Adams County, the attorney general said.