Nathan Woodyard resigns position with Aurora police following acquittal in Elijah McClain’s death

FILE PHOTO: Aurora police officer Nathan Woodyard, right, leaves the courtroom during a break in his trial on charges he faces in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain, on Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2023, at the Adams County Justice Center in Brighton, Colo. (Timothy Hurst/Denver Gazette)
Timothy Hurst/Denver Gazette
The Aurora police officer who was found not guilty in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain has resigned his position with the police department.
Nathan Woodyard resigned his position on Friday, a spokesman with the city of Aurora confirmed to The Denver Gazette.
Woodyard — who was the first officer to stop McClain, 23, on the night of Aug. 24, 2019, as he walked home from a convenience store — was acquitted on charges of criminally negligent homicide and reckless manslaughter in November and was reinstated to the Aurora Police Department.
Woodyard and two other officers, Randy Roedema and Jason Rosenblatt, had responded to a 911 call by a teenager who reported that McClain looked suspicious because the caller spotted him wearing a face mask and waving his arms.
A few minutes after the encounter began, Woodyard used a neck hold on McClain, called a carotid hold, that temporarily restricts oxygen to a person’s brain and can induce brief unconsciousness. About 18 minutes after the struggle began, a paramedic called to the scene injected McClain with 500 milligrams of ketamine, a sedative. He stopped breathing and went into cardiac arrest shortly after.
A doctor pronounced him brain dead three days later.
Woodyard was accused of ignoring McClain’s pleas that he could not breathe while handcuffed on the ground and not notifying paramedics of McClain’s symptoms.
Woodyard testified he would have approached that night differently in hindsight. But he said his mindset was defined by the stress of thinking he might have died and the force he felt he had to use in response.
“I was expecting to get shot and I’d never see my wife again,” Woodyard said on the witness stand during his trial.
The Aurora Police Department owed Woodyard $212,546.04 in backpay for the time he spent on suspension while the legal case played out. A spokesman for the city of Aurora said that payment was slated to pay out in December 2023.