By Brad Brooks
LONGMONT, Colo. (Reuters) – A Colorado judge on Friday reduced the prison sentence of a paramedic convicted in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain, a black man who died after police choked him, to probation, the Denver Post reported.
Publika.az informs that Judge Mark Warner, who presided over three trials related to the death of McClain, who died after medical personnel injected him with a strong sedative, reduced the sentence of emergency medical worker Peter Cichuniec to four years of probation during the hearing.
In March, Warner sentenced the paramedic to five years in prison, the longest sentence of any police or paramedic convicted in McClain’s death. It was not immediately known when Cichuniec would be released.
“The court finds that there are truly unusual and mitigating circumstances and that this particular case is truly exceptional,” Warner said during the brief hearing, according to the Post.
Requests for comment from the court were not returned hours later, nor were requests for comment from the Colorado Attorney General’s Office, which prosecuted the McClain cases, or Cichuniec’s attorneys.
In December, jurors found Cichuniec, 51, guilty of criminally negligent homicide and second-degree assault in a rare trial of paramedics in such a case.
Cichuniec’s partner, Jeremy Cooper, 49, was also found guilty of criminally negligent homicide and sentenced to a 14-month suspended sentence.
Their joint trial was the last of three stemming from the death of McClain, 23, who allegedly committed no crime when officers stopped him.
A police officer was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 14 months in prison. Two more police officers were acquitted.
Local prosecutors initially declined to press charges in McClain’s case. This changed after the May 2020 killing of George Floyd, a black man who died at the hands of Minneapolis police.
