Jury selection began Friday for the trial of two Aurora police officers accused in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain of Aurora, about two years after Colorado’s attorney general announced their indictments by a grand jury.

The trial for Randy Roedema and Jason Rosenblatt is the first of three for the police officers and paramedics charged in McClain’s death. He died in August 2019 after the officers forcefully subdued him and one of the paramedics injected him with 500 milligrams of the sedative ketamine.

The trial is taking place in Brighton, the Adams County Courthouse, with 17th Judicial District Judge Mark Warner presiding.

Along with Roedema and Rosenblatt, former Aurora officer Nathan Woodyard and paramedics Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec have also been charged.

Roedema and Rosenblatt each face charges of criminally negligent homicide, manslaughter and second-degree assault in connection with McClain’s death. The sentencing range for a manslaughter conviction is two-to-six years, with the lesser included charge of criminally negligent homicide carrying a three-year maximum sentence.

Woodyard is scheduled to go to trial by himself with jury selection scheduled to start Oct. 13, while Cooper and Cichuniec have a trial scheduled to start with jury selection Nov. 17.

The police officers responded to a call of a suspicious person by someone who saw McClain walking home from a convenience store. Though McClain was not suspected of any crime, the officers subdued him. They handcuffed him and put McClain into a type of neck hold intended to gain control of a person by temporarily stopping the flow of blood to their brain, according to the indictment of the officers and paramedics.

The indictment said Woodyard stopped McClain initially, as the first officer on the scene. It accused him of putting McClain in the neck hold that caused him to go temporarily unconscious.

Roedema was the senior officer at the scene, responsible for directing other officers, according to the indictment. Among the accusations, he and Rosenblatt held McClain down, and, at one point, Roedema shoved his torso into the ground.

After paramedics arrived, Cooper injected him with ketamine, according to the indictment. It shows neither he, nor paramedic Peter Cichuniec, spoke to McClain, checked his vital signs or physically examined him.

McClain went into cardiac arrest on the way to the hospital and was taken off life support Aug. 30.

Jury selection for Roedema and Rosenblatt’s trial began Friday with potential jurors completing questionnaires. Live questioning of the pool of potential members will start next week.

Prosecutors from the Colorado Attorney General’s office, which is prosecuting the case, dropped sentence-enhancing counts for the assault charges against the two officers in August. Colorado’s sentence enhancement law triggers a mandatory minimum sentence if a person is convicted of one of the crimes included in it.

Causing serious injury or death is covered by the statute. The law carries a sentence of at least the midpoint in a crime’s presumptive sentencing range.

Cooper and Cichuniec also face a count each of second-degree assault with a deadly weapon — ketamine — and unlawfully administering the sedative without consent.

McClain’s death drew nationwide attention and prompted sweeping changes at the Aurora Police Department, including the appointment of an independent monitor to oversee the consent decree for systemic changes.  Aurora’ consent decree with the attorney general’s office arose from a report by Attorney General Phil Weiser that found the city’s police department had violated residents’ rights by using excessive force and failed to document stops as required by law.