(Los Angeles) One of the white American police officers prosecuted for the death of Elijah McClain, a young black man who was strangled and injected with ketamine during his arrest, was acquitted Monday by a court in Colorado.
Jurors found Nathan Woodyard, a police officer in the western US city of Aurora, not guilty of involuntary manslaughter in a 2019 case.
The police officer was accused of having carried out a chokehold on Elijah McClain, a young black man whose death, initially passed under the radar of the American media, had come out of the shadows in the wake of the murder of George Floyd , another African American, by a police officer in 2020.
At the beginning of October, another police officer involved in the death of Elijah McClain was found guilty of manslaughter. His sentence is due to be handed down in January.
PHOTO DAVID ZALUBOWSKI, ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES
A photo of Elijah McClain
The 23-year-old died of a heart attack three days after his arrest, during which he received an injection of ketamine – a powerful sedative – from paramedics.
On the day of the incident, police were called by a person describing a “suspicious” black man wearing a ski mask and “behaving strangely” on a street in Aurora.
A police officer claimed that Elijah McClain, who was not carrying any weapon, tried to grab his revolver during the intervention.
According to the victim’s family, he had simply gone out to buy a drink and often wore this ski mask so as not to be cold, as he suffered from anemia.
The two paramedics involved in the intervention are to be tried separately in the coming weeks, according to CNN.
The case was initially closed, but Colorado Governor Jared Polis requested the resumption of investigations in June 2020 after speaking with the family of the deceased. A petition launched to reopen the investigation had collected more than three million signatures.