Judge frees Colorado paramedic convicted in death of Elijah McClain from prison

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Judge frees Colorado paramedic convicted in death of Elijah McClain from prison

2024-09-14 06:35 Last Updated At：06:41

DENVER (AP) — A Colorado paramedic convicted in the death of Elijah McClain, a Black man whose name became part of the rallying cries for social justice that swept the U.S. in 2020, is being released from prison after a judge reduced his sentence to four years of probation Friday.

Judge Mark Warner said during his ruling that Peter Cichuniec had to make quick decision the night of the arrest as the highest-ranking paramedic at the scene, the Denver Post reported. He also noted a background of no previous criminal history and good character for Cichuniec, who had an 18-year-career as a firefighter and paramedic before he was convicted.

Warner held that the case had “unusual and extenuating circumstances,” in reference to a part of Colorado’s mandatory sentencing law, which allows a court to modify a sentence after a defendant has served least 119 days in prison if the judge finds such circumstances.

McClain was walking down the street in a Denver suburb in 2019 when police responding to a suspicious person report forcibly restrained him and put him in a neck hold. His final words — “I can’t breathe” — foreshadowed those of George Floyd a year later in Minneapolis.

Cichuniec and a fellow paramedic were convicted in December of criminally negligent homicide for injecting McClain with ketamine, a powerful sedative blamed for killing the 23-year-old massage therapist. Cichuniec also was convicted on a more serious charge of second-degree assault for giving a drug without consent or a legitimate medical purpose. The other paramedic avoided prison time, sentenced instead to 14 months in jail with work release and probation.

McClain’s death and others have raised questions about the use of ketamine to subdue struggling suspects, and the prosecution sent shock waves through the ranks of paramedics across the U.S.

The case has already achieved a “deterrence effect” to discourage similar crimes, Warner said in the hearing in Denver.

“Pete is coming home!” Cichuniec’s supporters cried out after Warner reduced the sentence at the hearing, according to the Post. They declined to comment to the newspaper.

Colorado Attorney General Philip Weiser said in a statement that he was disappointed in the reduced sentence but respected the court's decision.

The ruling by Warner, the same judge who handed down the prison sentence in March, will release Cichuniec from a prison on the northeastern Colorado plains, though exactly when was not immediately clear.

The president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, which had warned that Cichuniec’s conviction would set a chilling precedent for paramedics and firefighters, said it was relieved by the ruling.

“Pete Cichuniec did not belong behind bars,” Edward Kelly said in a statement. “We will always prioritize and advocate for the public’s safety and our members’ ability to do their jobs without fear of ill-conceived criminal prosecutions.”

McClain’s mother, Sheneen McClain, declined via email to comment Friday. In March she celebrated the original sentence handed down by the judge as she left the courtroom that day, raising her fist in the air.

Gruver reported from Cheyenne, Wyoming. Amy Beth Hanson contributed from Helena, Montana.

Hezbollah is hit by a wave of exploding pagers that killed at least 9 people and injured thousands

2024-09-18 12:21 Last Updated At：12:30

BEIRUT (AP) — Pagers used by hundreds of members of the militant group Hezbollah exploded near-simultaneously Tuesday in Lebanon and Syria, killing at least nine people, including an 8-year-old girl, and wounding several thousand, officials said. Hezbollah and the Lebanese government blamed Israel for what appeared to be a sophisticated remote attack.

An American official said Israel briefed the United States on Tuesday after the conclusion of the operation, in which small amounts of explosive secreted in the pagers were detonated. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the information publicly.

The Israeli military declined to comment.

Among those wounded was Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon. The mysterious explosions came amid rising tensions between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah, which have exchanged fire across the Israel-Lebanon border since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas that sparked the war in Gaza.

The pagers that blew up were apparently acquired by Hezbollah after the group’s leader ordered members in February to stop using cellphones, warning they could be tracked by Israeli intelligence. A Hezbollah official told The Associated Press the pagers were a new brand, but declined to say how long they had been in use.

Taiwanese company Gold Apollo said Wednesday that it authorized its brand on the AR-924 pagers used by the Hezbollah militant group, but the devices were produced and sold by a company called BAC.

At about 3:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday, as people shopped for groceries, sat in cafes or drove cars and motorcycles in the afternoon traffic, the pagers in their hands or pockets started heating up and then exploding — leaving blood-splattered scenes and panicking bystanders.

It appeared that many of those hit were members of Hezbollah, but it was not immediately clear if non-Hezbollah members also carried any of the exploding pagers.

The blasts were mainly in areas where the group has a strong presence, particularly a southern Beirut suburb and in the Beqaa region of eastern Lebanon, as well as in Damascus, according to Lebanese security officials and a Hezbollah official. The Hezbollah official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.

The explosions came hours after Israel’s internal security agency said it had foiled an attempt by Hezbollah to kill a former senior Israeli security official using a planted explosive device that could be remotely detonated.

The United States “was not aware of this incident in advance” and was not involved, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said. “At this point, we’re gathering information."

Experts said the pager explosions pointed to a long-planned operation, possibly carried out by infiltrating the supply chain and rigging the devices with explosives before they were delivered to Lebanon.

Whatever the means, it targeted an extraordinary breadth of people with hundreds of small explosions — wherever the pager carrier happened to be — that left some maimed.

One online video showed a man picking through produce at a grocery store when the bag he was carrying at his hip explodes, sending him sprawling to the ground and bystanders running.

At overwhelmed hospitals, wounded were rushed in on stretchers, some with missing hands, faces partly blown away or gaping holes at their hips and legs, according to AP photographers. On a main road in central Beirut, a car door was splattered with blood and the windshield cracked.

Lebanon Health Minister Firas Abiad told Qatar's Al Jazeera network at least nine people were killed, including an 8-year-old girl, and some 2,750 were wounded — 200 of them critically — by the explosions. Most had injuries in the face, hand, or around the abdomen.

It appeared eight of the dead belonged to Hezbollah. The group issued a statement confirming at least two members were killed in the pager bombings. One of them was the son of a Hezbollah member in Parliament, according to the Hezbollah official who spoke anonymously. The group later issued announcements that six other members were killed Tuesday, though it did not specify how.

“We hold the Israeli enemy fully responsible for this criminal aggression that also targeted civilians,” Hezbollah said, adding that Israel will “for sure get its just punishment.”

Iranian state-run IRNA news agency said that the country’s ambassador, Mojtaba Amani, was superficially wounded by an exploding pager and was being treated at a hospital.

Previously, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had warned the group’s members not to carry cellphones, saying they could be used by Israel to track and target them.

Sean Moorhouse, a former British Army officer and explosive ordnance disposal expert, said videos of the blasts suggested a small explosive charge — as small as a pencil eraser — had been placed into the devices. They would have had to have been rigged prior to delivery, very likely by Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, he said.

Elijah J. Magnier, a Brussels-based senior political risk analyst, said he spoke with Hezbollah members who had examined pagers that failed to explode. What triggered the blasts, he said, appeared to be an error message sent to all the devices that caused them to vibrate, forcing the user to click on the buttons to stop the vibration. The combination detonated a small amount of explosives hidden inside and ensured that the user was present when the blast went off, he said.

Israel has a long history of carrying out deadly operations well beyond its borders. This year, separate Israeli airstrikes in Beirut killed senior Hamas official Saleh Arouri and a top Hezbollah commander. A mysterious explosion in Iran, also blamed on Israel, killed Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ supreme leader.

Israel has killed Hamas militants in the past with booby-trapped cellphones and it’s widely believed to have been behind the Stuxnet computer virus attack on Iran’s nuclear program in 2010.

The pager bombings are likely to stoke Hezbollah's worries about vulnerabilities in security and communications as Israeli officials are threaten to escalate their monthslong conflict. The near-daily exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah have killed hundreds in Lebanon and several dozen in Israel, and have displaced tens of thousands on both sides of the border.

Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the U.N. special coordinator for Lebanon, deplored the attack and warned that it marks “an extremely concerning escalation in what is an already unacceptably volatile context.”

On Tuesday, Israel said that halting Hezbollah’s attacks in the north to allow residents to return to their homes is now an official war goal. Israeli Defense Minister Gallant said the focus of the conflict is shifting from Gaza to Israel’s north and that time is running out for a diplomatic solution with Hezbollah.

This story has been updated to correct the name of the Hezbollah lawmaker’s son killed by a pager blast.

Associated Press writers Hussein Malla, Hassan Ammar, Fadi Tawil and Sarah El Deeb in Beirut; Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran; Michael Biesecker in Washington; Josef Federman in Jerusalem; Zeke Miller in Washington; and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.