Former police officer sentenced for role in death of Black man
DENVER — A judge sentenced a former police officer to 14 months in jail for his role in the death of Elijah McClain after hearing the young Black man’s mother on Friday call the officer a “bully with a badge” who will always have blood on his hands.
The officer, Randy Roedema, was the most senior law enforcement member to initially respond to the scene and the only one found guilty in McClain’s death. A jury convicted him in October of criminally negligent homicide, a felony, and third-degree assault, a misdemeanor.
The 23-year-old’s killing Aug. 24, 2019, gained renewed interest the following year as mass protests swept the nation over the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. McClain’s death became a rallying cry for critics of racial injustice in policing.
In a separate trial, two paramedics were recently convicted for injecting McClain with an overdose of the sedative ketamine after police put him in a neck hold. Sentencing for the paramedics will come in March.
Before Judge Mark Warner handed down the sentence, McClain’s mother, Sheneen McClain, raged against Roedema after he expressed remorse but stopped short of apologizing.
“Randy Roedema stole my son’s life,” she said. “All the belated apologies in the world can’t remove my son’s blood from Randy Roedema’s hands.”
Protecting the community was “the furthest thing from his mind” the night her son was stopped walking home from a store, she said.
She hugged a supporter and wiped tears as she sat back down.
Senior Assistant Attorney General Jason Slothouber described how, in the last minutes of McClain’s life, he struggled to breathe through vomit yet still faced violence from Roedema who picked him up, slammed him down and dug his knee into his back.
The lack of compassion was all the more startling, Slothouber said, after he read all 76 letters friends, relatives and associates wrote in Roedema’s support.
“I don’t know why that compassion and that care that his friends and his family, the people who served with him, talk about, was not there for Elijah McClain. But it clearly wasn’t,” Slothouber said.
Roedema also spoke at the hearing, as did his sister and former military colleagues. Roedema was a U.S. Marine who was wounded in Iraq.
“I want the McClain family to know the sadness I feel about Elijah being gone. He was young,” Roedema said.
Roedema said he wished the initial 911 call that reported McClain looking suspicious that night had never been made. But he didn’t comment about anything he could have done differently.