The recent Colorado Court of Appeals ruling to retry two paramedics involved in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain will be appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court, a state prosecutor said Wednesday in court.

The prosecutor, Erin Grundy, also said there will be multiple filings in the case and the process would likely last through the end of the year, according to The Denver Gazette’s news partner 9NEWS.

McClain, 23, was walking home from a convenience store in Aurora when now-former Aurora Police Department officer Randy Roedema and two others, responding to a 911 call reporting that he looked “sketchy,” confronted and subdued him.

McClain said repeatedly, “I can’t breathe,” before two paramedics, Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec, injected him with the sedative ketamine.

McClain’s heart stopped a short time later. Paramedics restored his pulse, but he never regained consciousness and died three days later.

Initially, the Adams County district attorney did not charge anyone in connection to McClain’s death.

Attorney General Phil Weiser took the case to a statewide grand jury in 2021, resulting in indictments against the two paramedics and three officers.

Roedema was found guilty of criminally negligent homicide and third-degree assault, and Cooper and Cichuniec were convicted of criminally negligent homicide. Cichuniec was also found guilty of second-degree assault.

Both Cooper and Cichuniec appealed their convictions and, in early June, the Colorado Court of Appeals ruled in favor of a retrial for both paramedics. The court also affirmed Cichuniec’s second-degree assault conviction, 9NEWS reported.

Roedema also appealed his conviction and the case is ongoing.

The deadline to file a notice of appeal at the state’s highest court is July 16. The AG’s office could also request an extension to that deadline, 9NEWS reported.

It’s not clear when the Colorado Supreme Court would decide whether to consider the appeal, according to 9NEWS.

If justices do, the next question is whether they ultimately would affirm the appeals court’s ruling — which would likely end the case — or overturn it. If that were to happen, the AG’s office would have to decide whether to take Cooper and Cichuniec back to court and retry them on the criminally negligent homicide charges, 9NEWS reported.

McClain’s death initiated public outcry and calls for reform of the APD that are ongoing. An investigation by the Colorado Attorney General’s Office found patterns of excessive force and civil rights violations by the department.

The APD has been under a consent decree to implement sweeping changes to department practices since then, and the decree is set to end early next year.

As the decree comes to a close, the Aurora City Council cast an initial vote of approval to stand up an Office of Public Safety Accountability to oversee the police department.

The Denver Gazette’s news partners 9NEWS contributed to this story.