After leaving a convenience store, Elijah McClain was described by one male caller to police as ‘sketchy.” 

Police jumped on McClain, who was 5 foot 7 inches and weighed 145 pounds, and beat him. The paramedic injected McClain with ketamine. He died three days later in a local hospital.

Jurors convicted a Colorado police officer Thursday and acquitted a former cop of charges in the 2019 death of McClain.

Aurora police officer Randy Roedema, 41, was found guilty of criminally negligent homicide and third-degree assault. The 12-person jury found the other officer, Jason Rosenblatt, 34, who was fired in 2020, not guilty on all charges.

This was not a happy outcome for McClain’s mother, but in a way, she said she expected the decision because her son was Black.

Sheneen McClain said Thursday that she is “disappointed” after the split verdict in the trial of two officers charged in the 2021 death of her son.

“I’m disappointed because, despite all the evidence in front of their face, they still played the race card,” McClain said in an interview with a local television reporter after the verdict was read. 

“Right is right, and wrong is wrong. And when you continue to allow the type of injustice that happened to my son, there is so much to work on.”

Sheneen McClain moved her children to Colorado to escape gang violence, but the police gangs are much more brutal. 

Roedema and Rosenblatt were the first two of five police officers and paramedics to stand trial over charges linked to McClain’s death, which gained renewed attention amid nationwide protests following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020.

A local prosecutor initially declined to bring criminal charges over McClain’s death partly because of an inconclusive initial autopsy report, but the officers involved were indicted in 2021 after Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser launched a grand jury investigation.

Aurora agreed to pay $15 million to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit brought by McClain’s parents in 2021. 

Also, in 2021, a civil rights investigation into the Aurora police and fire departments found they violated state and federal law through racially biased policing, use of excessive force, failing to record community interactions, and unlawfully administering ketamine.