A federal court has rejected a request by the Arapahoe County sheriff and other first responders to pause the lawsuit against them from a man who involuntarily received a heavy ketamine injection and subsequently needed machine breathing assistance in the hospital for three days.

Sheriff Tyler Brown, South Metro Fire Rescue and five employees who were directly involved in the August 2019 arrest of Elijah McKnight asked to halt the discovery of evidence while a judge considered their motion to dismiss McKnight’s excessive force lawsuit. But on Tuesday, U.S. Magistrate Judge S. Kato Crews refused to do so.

“The Court takes judicial notice of the local and national attention this issue has garnered,” he wrote in an Aug. 10 order. “To be sure, this is not the only case in this district (involving the use of Ketamine) to arise during the week of August 18, 2019.”

Crews was referring to Elijah McClain, the 23-year-old man who died one week after Aurora police and emergency medical personnel restrained and injected him with ketamine, despite the lack of reasonable suspicion that he had committed any crime.

McClain’s deadly interaction with Aurora first responders happened just four days after McKnight’s ketamine injection. McClain received a 500 milligram dose of the sedative, suffered cardiac arrest and never regained consciousness. South Metro responders injected McKnight with two doses totaling 750 milligrams.

The defendants from the sheriff’s office and South Metro have asserted qualified immunity, which is a judicial doctrine shielding government employees from liability unless they violate a clearly-established legal right. They argued to the court that they could not conceive of “any discernible public interest that would be negatively impacted” by pausing the discovery of evidence until a judge could make the decision on qualified immunity.

“This case is entering its eighth month, and the incident at issue took place two years ago,” Crews countered in his order. “The Plaintiff in this case spent three days unconscious and required machine assistance to help him breathe. He is deserving of answers regarding why this happened and whether anyone is to be held responsible.”

Crews also agreed with a previous magistrate judge who rejected a similar request in the McClain family’s lawsuit against Aurora, finding it was not in the public interest to “put on the back burner” a lawsuit that raised significant questions about the practices of emergency responders.

In his amended claim, McKnight detailed how two sheriff’s deputies encountered him passed out at a bus stop on the night of Aug. 20, 2019. The deputies reportedly revived him without difficulty, and McKnight volunteered that he had two warrants for his arrest. They then tackled and restrained McKnight, which McKnight believed to be unreasonable given the lack of a threat he posed.

After the deputies placed McKnight in handcuffs, South Metro personnel arrived. After reviewing body-worn camera footage, KUNC reported that one first responder said McKnight was “a little too hyped up right now,” and the South Metro workers discussed injecting him with ketamine.

“Don’t inject anything into my veins,” McKnight told them.

One of the workers gave McKnight 500 milligrams of the sedative, allegedly putting him in a “near cathartic like state.” After receiving authorization from a doctor, the South Metro worker injected McKnight with 250 additional milligrams. According to his lawsuit, McKnight was in the hospital for a week and a half, three days of which were spent in the intensive care unit hooked up to an assistive breathing machine.

“It’s wrong that my life was almost taken, and Elijah McClain’s life was taken in a similar incident,” McKnight told FOX31.

Earlier this year, the governor signed into law new restrictions on the use of ketamine at scenes where police are present. Aside from a prohibition on law enforcement unduly influencing whether to administer ketamine, the legislation requires emergency medical personnel in such situations to weigh or estimate the weight of the person, possess training in the use of ketamine, and have the equipment and ability to respond to adverse reactions.

The law also clarifies that “excited delirium” is not a medical emergency justifying the sedative’s use. First responders claimed both McClain and McKnight had the condition.

The American Society of Anesthesiologists has said it opposes ketamine “or any other sedative/hypnotic agent to chemically incapacitate someone for a law enforcement purpose and not for a legitimate medical reason.”

McKnight’s lawsuit requests that he be paid for lost wages, medical expenses, and be awarded other damages.

The case is McKnight v. Brown et al.