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(AURORA, Colo.) — A jury found two Aurora, Colorado, paramedics charged in connection with the 2019 death of 23-year-old Elijah McClain guilty on Friday of criminally negligent homicide.

Peter Cichuniec and Jeremy Cooper were accused of administering an excessive amount of ketamine to sedate McClain after an encounter with police on Aug. 24, 2019.

Cichuniec was also found guilty of assault in the second degree unlawful administration of drugs.

They were both acquitted of assault in the second degree with intent to cause bodily injury causing serious bodily injury.

Cooper was found not guilty of assault in the second degree unlawful administration of drugs.

They both pleaded not guilty to their charges.

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said he was satisfied with the verdict and that more accountability was still needed.

“Elijah did nothing wrong that evening, his life mattered, and he should be here today. Accountability does not end with these trials,” Weiser said in a statement.

“Too many times, we have seen people die when officers unnecessarily escalate situations that don’t call for the use of force. We must continue our work to improve policing and emergency response and build trust between law enforcement, first responders, and the people they are sworn to protect. We must do all we can to prevent these tragedies,” Weiser added.

Ahead of the verdict being read on Friday, the judge noted that there have been “high emotions” in the case and urged people to use “proper courtroom decorum.”

McClain was confronted by police while walking home from a convenience store after a 911 caller told authorities they had seen someone “sketchy” in the area.

McClain was unarmed and wearing a ski mask at the time. His family says he had anemia, a blood condition that can make people feel cold more easily.

When officers arrived on the scene, they told McClain they had a right to stop him because he was “being suspicious.”

In police body camera footage, McClain can be heard telling police he was going home, and that “I have a right to go where I am going.”

Officer Nathan Woodyard placed McClain in a carotid hold and he and the other two officers on the scene moved McClain by force to the grass and restrained him.

When EMTs arrived at the scene, McClain was given a shot of 500 milligrams of ketamine for “rapid tranquilization in order to minimize time struggling,” according to department policy, and was loaded into an ambulance where he had a heart attack, according to investigators.

McClain’s cause of death, which was previously listed as “undetermined,” was listed in an amended autopsy report as “complications of ketamine administration following forcible restraint.” The manner of death remained listed as “undetermined” as it was in the initial report.

He died on Aug. 30, 2019, three days after doctors pronounced him brain dead and he was removed from life support, officials said.

Former police officer Randy Roedema was found guilty of criminally negligent homicide and assault in the third degree in McClain’s death.

Two other officers, Jason Rosenblatt and Nathan Woodyard, were found not guilty on charges of reckless manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. Rosenblatt was also acquitted on charges of assault in the second degree.

The prosecution argued that Cichuniec and Cooper failed to give McClain adequate medical assessments before administering the ketamine when they arrived at the scene.

“Didn’t ask the police a question about it. Didn’t speak a single word to him. Didn’t get a piece of equipment out of the bag. Didn’t kneel down to look at him. Didn’t lean over to look at him. Didn’t put a single finger on him. Didn’t take a single vital sign,” a prosecutor said in closing arguments.

“They knew nothing. They learned nothing. They asked no questions. They didn’t care,” the prosecutor added.

The prosecution took issue with the assessment that McClain needed ketamine because he was suffering from “excited delirium” — which is characterized by the FBI as a “potentially deadly medical condition involving psychotic behavior, elevated temperature, and an extreme fight-or-flight response by the nervous system.”

Sheenen McClain told ABC News in a statement Friday ahead of the verdict being reached that there was no excuse for the lack of accountability by the paramedics.

“No amount of procedures, practices, protocols, or the lack of training for service jobs will ever replace the human heart. I am sure that if Elijah had been one of their children, family members, friends, or comrades, they would not have been so indifferent to what was happening, like they were with my son,” Sheenen McClain said in the statement.

She added, “We are supposed to do better if we know how to do better, so there is no excuse for the lack of accountability in their collective actions.”

In recent years, particularly after McClain’s death, medical organizations such as the American Medical Association have begun to reject the use of this diagnosis.

“Elijah is on the ground, barely moving. He does not need to have struggling, minimized,” prosecutors said. “There was not one reason that the defendants needed to make any one of these terrible decisions. There was no justification not to assess Mr. McClain. There was no justification to give someone who is not moving a sedative. There is no justification to ignore a lifeless patient for six minutes before you try to take his pulse.”

McClain weighed 143 pounds, but was given a higher dose of ketamine than recommended for someone his size and overdosed, according to Adams County coroner’s office pathologist Stephen Cina.

Cooper’s defense attorney argued there is a lack of protocol for the situation these paramedics found themselves in, citing the aggravated police presence, the way paramedics say they had to estimate McClain’s weight with police on top of him, the way to determine who had authority at the scene, and the protocols to accurately assess if a patient is suffering from excited delirium.

“There were a lot of systemic problems with both law enforcement, the practice of medicine — the practice of paramedic medicine — that needed to be fixed,” Cooper’s defense attorney said before highlighting that police were dispatched on nothing more than someone saying someone else looked sketchy.

“There is no protocol in effect in August 2019 that tells paramedics: ‘What do you do when police are all over a potential patient.’ How do you deal with that? There’s been no training there’s-no protocol,” the defense said.

The defense also addressed the six minutes in which paramedics neglected to check McClain for a pulse following the ketamine injection, arguing that McClain was still in the hands of officers on the scene.

“Six anxious minutes for that. Six excruciating for Mr. McClain — who was still being manhandled and restrained by not one, not two, three officers,” the defense said.

In closing, the prosecution cited several medical experts who testified that it was ketamine that killed McClain. The defense argued that expert testimony lacked proof that ketamine alone caused McClain’s death beyond a reasonable doubt.

“Seeing the video of getting the ketamine and two minutes later, his condition. I believe the ketamine administration was the most important factor into his cardiopulmonary arrest,” said Cina in his testimony.

He performed the autopsy on McClain and wrote the autopsy report where he determined McClain’s cause of death as “complications of ketamine administration following forcible restraint.”

He also said in his testimony: “Being that there is the other variable of the restraint occurring before the ketamine administration, I can’t say for sure that it didn’t affect him somehow, that he reacted towards the ketamine differently than he normally would have.”

In the final rebuttal, the prosecution reiterated the emotional pleas heard from McClain obtained from police body camera footage during his confrontation with police.

“Mr. McClain screams out, ‘Stop. Please.’ While the defendant is supposedly conducting this rigorous visual assessment,” the prosecution said. “And then while he’s supposedly conducting this rigorous visual assessment of his patient, Elijah McClain utters his last words on Earth. ‘Please. Help me.'”

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(SAN DIEGO) — A man who slipped on the side of a San Diego cliff and became trapped under broken concrete has been freed following a “treacherous” hourslong rescue.

San Diego Fire-Rescue said it responded to the Sunset Cliffs area around 3:40 p.m. local time Thursday to a report of a person trapped in a hole along the cliffside.

The man was uninjured but trapped from the waist down in a crevasse along the cliff, San Diego Fire-Rescue said. The hole was about 18 inches in diameter, “which has caused extreme difficulty in getting him out,” rescuers said.

“The location of this rescue is very treacherous for rescuers as well as the patient,” San Diego Fire-Rescue said.

Technical rescue team members from San Diego Fire-Rescue and the Chula Vista Fire Department worked to free the man for several hours until the tide began to rise.

The man was provided with electrolytes, hot packs and blankets and an engine company stayed with him throughout the night until the rescue effort could resume Friday morning when the tide receded, authorities said.

Crews were able to free the man from the hole around 11 a.m. Friday, according to footage of the rescue by San Diego ABC affiliate KGTV.

He will be taken to an area hospital for further evaluation, according to KGTV.

No further details on the man or how long he had been trapped in the crevasse have been released by authorities.

Crews at the scene told KGTV that the man reported being stranded for at least three days before someone heard his calls for help on Thursday.

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(NEW YORK) — A California man was charged with planning to bomb the FBI Los Angeles field office, according to federal prosecutors.

Mark Anten, of Sun Valley, California, started in July allegedly sending threatening emails to the field office, referred to himself as the “Unabomber” and continued to send threatening messages through December — even visiting the office to “scope” it out, prosecutors said.

“Specifically, on November 2, 2023, ANTEN emailed FBI agents saying he ’embrace[d]’ that he was voted most likely in his graduating class to become the next Unabomber. In this email, ANTEN listed similarities between himself and the Unabomber, proclaimed that he was working on a manifesto, and signed his email ‘Unabomber,'” the court documents filed Wednesday say.

“You are playing games with the wrong game player. You are dangerously close to being added to the list,” Anten allegedly wrote on Nov. 2. “Trust me, you don’t want to be on the list. FBI Agents on the list receive … Threats of … imprisonment and death.”

On Nov. 20, FBI task force agents visited Anten at his house, “admonished” him for sending threatening emails to agents and provided him with an email to send communications to, the court documents state.

Despite the visit from FBI agents, he still continued to send threatening messages, prosecutors allege.

“In one email with the subject ‘It’s Only a Matter of Time,’ ANTEN closed the email with, ‘I don’t care about death or SuperMax,'” according to an email sent on Dec. 5, per court documents. “ANTEN said, ‘I AM THE UNABOMBER’ and ‘I WILL UNABOMB THE LOS ANGELES FBI HQ.’ In this email, ANTEN said, ‘I am supposed to be in Beverly Hills tomorrow for a meeting. I will swing by your office if there is time.’ ANTEN ended his email with, ‘[t]his ain’t over,’ and signed it ‘UNABOMBER.'”

The next day, he said he could go on a “mass murder spree. In fact, it would be very explainable by your actions.” He closed the email by saying “Supermax or Death,” according to charging documents.

He then sent a screenshot of his Google search which allegedly showed instructions on how to make a dirty bomb, and a few hours later on Dec. 6, he showed up to the office, but did not have any weapons, documents show.

The complaint alleges Anten has a history of making threats online.

“In one post, ANTEN said, ‘Just bought my first guns. AR-180 Assault rifle with cope, Colt K-Model .45 ACP, a Smith and Wesson .38 four-inch, a Beretta 225 ACP., Remington 100 Auto-loader.’ In a comment on that same post, ANTEN said, ‘And my enemies better be war,'” the complaint says.

A lawyer for Anten wasn’t immediately listed.

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(NEW YORK) — Kenneth Gonzalez died last spring, but he never had a funeral.

Instead, his friend Richard Jarrett stood in front of a room of mostly strangers in the basement of Congregation Rodeph Sholom in New York City Wednesday night and, speaking slowly from a piece of paper, eulogized his friend during a service commemorating the hundreds of unhoused New Yorkers who died in the last year.

“He had a good heart. Everyone in the building misses Kenny,” Jarrett said in front of a crowd of approximately 200 volunteers, social workers, and homeless advocates.

Since 1990, advocates in dozens of cities have held services on the winter solstice — the longest night of the year — to remember the homeless who have died over the last year.

New York’s service, which was organized by the nonprofit organizations Care for the Homeless and Urban Pathways, remembered the lives of 331 people, many of whom lacked any kind of commemoration when they died.

“It is simultaneously tragic and in some ways entirely unsurprising that we have so many people to mourn today,” Molly Wasow Park, the commissioner of New York’s Department of Social Services, told the crowd. “Tonight is about people, New Yorkers who are sons, daughters, parents, siblings and friends.”

Nationwide, organizers in more than 40 cities are planning similar events on or around the winter solstice, according to National Coalition for the Homeless executive director Donald Whitehead.

The exact number of homeless people who die annually is a frustratingly imprecise statistic, according to Whitehead. Most coroners fail to collect residential information, and the United States lacks a unified approach to tracking homeless deaths.

Between July 2021 and June 2022 — the most recent count — a record number of 684 people experiencing homelessness in New York City passed away. Nationwide, Whitehead estimated that between 15,000 and 40,000 homeless people died in 2023.

“We know it’s way too high, and all these deaths are preventable,” Whitehead told ABC News.

New York’s service also highlighted the city’s ongoing reckoning with homelessness amid a surge of migrant arrivals and public violence involving the homeless.

With the arrival of over 150,000 migrants over the last 18 months, New York Mayor Eric Adams has repeatedly warned that New York’s shelter system has been pushed “past its breaking point.”

The death of Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old homeless man struggling with mental health issues who died after being placed in a chokehold by fellow subway passenger Daniel Penny in May, also brought international attention to violence directed at homeless New Yorkers. Penny has pleaded not guilty to second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide charges.

“We remember a young man failed by society’s safety net following the tragic loss of his mother at a very young age,” Urban Pathways CEO Frederick Shack said during a eulogy for Neely at Wednesday’s service.

The majority of the names read at the service were accompanied by fragmented remembrances of the lives lost. While 13 people received eulogies, many who died were identified by only a first name. Some were accompanied by photos and biographical information, but others simply went by Jane or John Doe.

“While their names remain unknown, we do know that they had a life filled with stories, wisdom and significance. We know that they were somebody’s child, sibling, cousin, parents, aunt, uncle or friends. We also know that they were left vulnerable to the elements and, at times, to violence,” said Broadway Community Executive Director Isaac Alderstein.

According to Nicole McVinua, the director of Policy for Urban Pathways, the process of gathering names for the ceremony is a largely grassroots effort among organizers. The number of names read likely represents only about half the total number of those who died in 2023.

While nonprofits and city officials work to connect with the families of loved ones of the deceased, many go unidentified, lack any funeral service, and rest in New York’s potter’s field on Hart Island, according to McVinua.

“Everything is through word of mouth,” Dinack Martinez, a homeless man who lives in a Queens shelter, told ABC News about how he learned four people in his shelter had died.

While Martinez said he appreciated a formal ceremony commemorating the deceased, he said he struggled to reconcile the outpouring of grief at the ceremony with the callous way many members of the public treat homeless people on the street.

“An event like this, where we name those who have passed away, gives those who have passed away the opportunity to be. It marks their presence and their existence,” Care for the Homeless associate program director Katharine Mackel said during the ceremony.

For many of the social workers present at Wednesday’s service, the event also provided an opportunity to remember the lives of their clients whose lives were taken from them as they struggled to climb out of homelessness.

“Though I’ve only known Fred for a short period of time, I saw a kind, gentle and strong man who cared for his neighbors, others in the community, and family,” social worker Dottie Stevenson read about a client.

Meghan Garven, another social worker, fought back tears as she described helping her client Omar Gnyp order groceries on Sundays and write thank-you cards to the nurses at his rehab facility.

“The best part about working with Omar was watching him connect with himself and see his personality come out,” she said. “I can’t look at an Entenmann’s raspberry Danish without thinking of him.”

 

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(NEW YORK) — Former President Donald Trump is seeking to delay his defamation trial set to begin next month in the 2019 lawsuit brought by the writer E. Jean Carroll, so he can consider a potential appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Trump is scheduled to go on trial Jan. 15 in Manhattan federal court to determine how much in damages he owes to Carroll for calling her a liar and disparaging her when he denied her rape claim.

Carroll, a former Elle magazine columnist, sued Trump in November 2019 over comments he made shortly after Carroll publicly accused him of raping her in a Manhattan department store dressing room in the 1990s.

The former president said Carroll was “not my type” and suggested she fabricated her accusation for ulterior and improper purposes, including to increase sales of her then-forthcoming book. Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

A federal appeals court ruled earlier this month Trump could not use presidential immunity as a defense because he waited too long to invoke it. Defense attorney Alina Habba asked the appellate court to give Trump 90 days to consider his options and to stay the trial indefinitely until all appeals are exhausted.

“The requested stays are necessary and appropriate to give President Trump an opportunity to fully litigate his entitlement to present an immunity defense in the underlying proceedings, including pursuing the appeal in the Supreme Court if necessary,” Habba wrote.

Carroll prevailed in a separate but related lawsuit in May that alleged defamation and battery, and was awarded $5 million in damages. Trump is appealing that case.

 

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(MOSCOW, Idaho) — Prosecutors leading the case against Bryan Kohberger, the man accused of killing four Idaho college students last fall, are asking for his trial to be scheduled for the summer of 2024, and that the timeframe of the trial steers clear of the academic calendar for all area high schools and universities.

In a new filing Thursday, prosecutors note Moscow High School’s close proximity to the courthouse — especially in light of the expected media presence and other increase in activity whenever the capital murder trial does kick off — and want to preserve public safety and convenience as much as possible.

Prosecutors also said Kohberger’s team has already had enough opportunity to offer an alibi, and asked that the judge consider the matter addressed and closed.

They also asked that deadlines be set for both parties to complete discovery, pretrial motions and to disclose who they’re planning to call for expert witnesses, as well as for jury questionnaire proposals, jury instructions, and the like.

The trial was originally set to begin on Oct. 2 and was indefinitely delayed after Kohberger waived his right to a speedy trial.

In their new filing Thursday, prosecutors suggested that the judge now put a status conference on the books to schedule everything anew.

No firm date for the trial has yet been set. The University of Idaho’s spring semester ends on May 10, 2024. Moscow High School’s classes end in the first full week of June.

Prosecutors allege that in the early morning hours of Nov. 13, 2022, Kohberger, a criminology Ph.D. student at nearby Washington State University, broke into an off-campus home and stabbed to death the University of Idaho students: Ethan Chapin, 20; Madison Mogen, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20, and Kaylee Goncalves, 21.

After a six-week hunt, police zeroed in on Kohberger as a suspect. He was arrested on Dec. 30, 2022, at his family’s home in Pennsylvania. He was indicted in May and charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary.

He declined to offer a plea at his arraignment, so the judge entered a not-guilty plea on his behalf.

Lawyers for Kohberger have previously said he was driving around alone on the night when the killings occurred, and wasn’t in the home.

If convicted, Kohberger could face the death penalty.

ABC News’ Julie Scott contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — The FBI has gotten involved following a surge in violent threats against the Colorado Supreme Court justices who ruled earlier this week that former President Donald Trump was disqualified from appearing on the 2024 primary ballot.

“The FBI is aware of the situation and working with local law enforcement,” the agency said in a statement to ABC News. “We will vigorously pursue —investigations of any threat or use of violence committed by someone who uses extremist views to justify their actions regardless of motivation.”

The threats to the justices come as Lisa Monaco, the number two ranking official at the Justice Department, told ABC News in an exclusive interview for This Week that in an extremely challenging terror threat environment – threats against public officials are also spiking to levels never before seen.

“Well, what we’ve seen is an unprecedented rise in threats to public officials across the board: law enforcement agents, prosecutors, judges and election officials. And we are seeing that and responding to it,” she said.

Monaco said this week alone, the FBI is investigating “cases involving threats to kill FBI agents, a Supreme Court justice, and three presidential candidates.”

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(TACOMA, Wash.) — A jury has found three officers not guilty in the 2020 death of Manuel “Manny” Ellis while in police custody in Tacoma, Washington.

Christopher Burbank, 38, and Matthew Collins, 40, were each found not guilty of second-degree murder and first-degree manslaughter, while Timothy Rankine, 34, was found not guilty of first-degree manslaughter.

All three officers faced a maximum of life in prison if they had been convicted, according to the Washington Legislature.

“I want to start by thanking the jury and court staff for their service. I also want to thank the members of my legal team for their extraordinary hard work and dedication. I know the Ellis family is hurting, and my heart goes out to them,” Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in a statement after the verdict.

The jury began deliberating on Dec. 14, but the jury was asked to restart twice, as alternate jurors needed to be called in. On Monday, a juror’s status was changed “from seated to alternate because of their unavailability due to a family concern,” the superior court said, and an alternate juror joined the 11 other seated members to restart deliberations. Then on Tuesday, a juror tested positive for COVID-19, the court said, and an alternate juror was called.

Ellis, an unarmed, 33-year-old Black man, died on March 3, 2020, after he was restrained, beaten, tased and put in a spit mask by law enforcement, according to prosecutors. In a video of the encounter, Ellis can be heard pleading with the officers, saying, “Can’t breathe, sir, can’t breathe.”

Special prosecutor Patricia Eakes of Washington’s Attorney General’s Office had relied on eyewitness testimony and video evidence to present the state’s closing arguments. Eakes said Ellis didn’t have to die that night.

“He was a human who deserved the same dignity that we all do,” she said. “He deserved to be treated with basic human dignity.”

Eakes compared Ellis’ treatment to that of an animal, and the description him being hogtied with a hobble in her closing arguments caused tension during the court proceedings. A hobble is a restraining device used by police to secure the legs and ankles of a suspect.

Defense attorneys motioned for a dismissal, a mistrial, and objected to her references to Ellis as a human being several times.

The defense attorneys had maintained that while the death of Ellis was unfortunate, it wasn’t unlawful. Throughout the trial, they presented evidence of Ellis’ history of drug addiction and mental health issues as their main defense.

The county medical examiner ruled Ellis’ death a homicide due to “hypoxia due to physical restraint,” and later found the presence of methamphetamine in Ellis’ blood. The examiner said his death was not likely caused by drug intoxication, according to the probable cause statement.

Jared Ausserer, an attorney for Collins, who was first on the scene with Burbank, said during his closing argument there was no doubt that Ellis was a good son, uncle and brother, but added, “When he was sober.”

“We know when he was high on meth, he was a different person,” Ausserer said.

Wayne Fricke, Burbank’s attorney, justified the defendant’s use of force and blamed Ellis for his own death. He said Ellis “created his own death,” and the use of methamphetamine “caused him to be violent, unpredictable and paranoid.”

Rankine, who arrived with a second unit at the scene of the incident, was an officer for 14 months at the time of the incident, according to his attorney Mark Conrad’s closing statement. Conrad said he did not have hobble training and followed the superior officer’s orders that night.

“Officer Rankine responded to an emergent situation to assist other officers,” Anne Bremner, one of Rankine’s attorneys, said in a statement to ABC News. “We will ask the jury to not compound the tragedy of Mr. Ellis’ death with an unsupported and unjust verdict against Officer Rankine.”

The Tacoma police union told ABC News in a previous statement that they maintain their stance on this case, that the charges appear to be a “politically motivated witch hunt.”

“We certainly maintain our support for these officers and have not changed our beliefs on why they are charged,” Henry Betts, Tacoma Police Union Local #6 president, said.

ABC News had previously reached out to Ausserer and Fricke for statements but did not receive a response.

ABC News’ Tesfaye Negussie, Brittany Gaddy, Morgan Winsor and Kiara Alfonseca contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — At least 15 people were killed and 24 were injured in a shooting at Charles University in Prague on Thursday, according to Prague’s head of police.

The suspect — a 24-year-old student at the university — was “eliminated,” officials said. His body was found at Charles University’s faculty of the arts, the Prague head of police said.

There is no indication that there was any political or terrorism motive, police said.

No police officers were injured, officials said.

As chaos broke out, people fled from Prague’s Old Town, running across the iconic Charles Bridge.

Leo Menindez, from Mexico, told ABC News, “We started hearing the police sirens and ambulances from the Charles Bridge. Then we started hearing the shots and then everyone started to run.”

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

 

 

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(NEW YORK) — Ten people were killed and many were injured in a shooting at Charles University in Prague on Thursday, according to Czech officials.

The suspect was “eliminated,” officials said.

Eleven people suffered serious injuries, eight have moderate injuries and five have light injuries, according to the city’s medical rescue service.

Police advised people in the area not to go outside, and said evacuations were taking place.

As chaos broke out, people fled from Prague’s Old Town, running across the iconic Charles Bridge.

Leo Menindez, from Mexico, told ABC News, “We started hearing the police sirens and ambulances from the Charles Bridge. Then we started hearing the shots and then everyone started to run.”

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

 

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