By Keith Coffman
DENVER (Reuters) - Colorado's attorney general on Friday convened a grand jury probe into the death of Elijah McClain, a young unarmed Black man placed in a chokehold and injected with the powerful sedative ketamine while under arrest.
McClain, 23, was walking on a street alone in the Denver suburb of Aurora in August 2019 when he was stopped and subdued by three police officers responding to a report that he had been seen acting suspiciously.
He went into cardiac arrest after the encounter, during which police restrained him using a carotid hold around his neck, and paramedics attending to him administered a dose of ketamine. McClain died days later at a hospital.
Local prosecutors declined to file charges in the case, citing an autopsy listing the cause of death as undetermined.
But Colorado's governor later ordered the state attorney general's office to conduct an independent investigation. The attorney general, Phil Weiser, said in a statement on Friday he has opened a grand jury probe as part of that inquiry.
Weiser's office has also opened a broad investigation of the Aurora police department to determine whether its practices and patterns of conduct might pose civil rights violations.
The case drew renewed scrutiny and public ire in June of this year as protesters against racial injustice and police brutality took to the streets across the United States after George Floyd, a Black man, died in Minneapolis when a police officer knelt on his neck.
McClain's family, which says he had committed no crime, filed a civil rights lawsuit against the city of Aurora and its police in August 2020, alleging murder and excessive use of force against Black people.