US judge reduces jail sentence of paramedic in McClain death

By Brad Brooks

LONGMONT, Colorado (Reuters) -A Colorado judge on Friday reduced to probation the prison sentence of a paramedic convicted in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain, a young Black man who died after police put him in a chokehold, a court official said.

Judge Mark Warner, who oversaw three trials concerning the death of McClain, who died after paramedics injected him with a powerful sedative, reduced the sentence of emergency medical worker Peter Cichuniec during a hearing to four years probation, said Suzanne Karrer, a spokesperson for the Colorado judicial branch.

Warner in March had sentenced the paramedic to five years in prison, the longest sentence of any of the police and paramedics put on trial for McClain's death. It was not immediately clear when Cichuniec would be released.

"The court finds, really, there are unusual and extenuating circumstances and they are truly exceptional in this particular case," Warner said during a brief hearing, according to the Denver Post.

After hours requests for comment were not returned from the Colorado attorney general's office, which prosecuted the McClain cases, or lawyers for Cichuniec.

Jurors in December found Cichuniec, 51, guilty of criminally negligent homicide and also of assault in the second degree 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 was sentenced to 14 months of work release.

Their joint trial was the last of three stemming from the death of McClain, 23, who was not alleged to have committed any crime when officers stopped him.

One police officer was found guilty of criminally negligent homicide and sentenced to 14 months in jail. Two other police officers were acquitted.

Local prosecutors initially declined to file charges in the McClain case. That changed following the May 2020 killing of George Floyd, a Black man who died at the hands of Minneapolis police.

(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Longmont, Colorado; editing by Miral Fahmy)