Italy judge: Teen claims he knifed police officer in self-defense

ROME – Two American teenagers jailed in Rome in the slaying of an Italian police officer showed “total absence of self-control,” making them highly dangerous to society, a judge concluded in ordering them kept behind bars while the investigation continues.

People unfold a banner reading in Italian: “Forever with us”, and bearing a photograph of Carabinieri’s officer Mario Cerciello Rega during his funeral in his hometown of Somma Vesuviana, near Naples, southern Italy, Monday, July 29, 2019. Two American teenagers were jailed in Rome on Saturday as authorities investigate their alleged roles in the fatal stabbing of the Italian police officer on a street near their hotel. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Judge Chiara Gallo said in the ruling, obtained Monday by The Associated Press, that there were “grave” indications that the California teens carried out the slaying of Carabinieri Deputy Brigadier Mario Cerciello Rega, who was stabbed 11 times Friday after he and a fellow plainclothes officer confronted the Americans as part of an investigation into a cocaine deal the two were allegedly involved in.

He died shortly afterward at a hospital.

Gallo cited testimony from witnesses, including the officer’s surviving partner, as well as a porter and a doorman in the Rome hotel where the teens were staying and the Americans’ own, sometimes conflicting accounts, to investigators.

Finnegan Lee Elder, 19, and Gabriel Christian Natale-Hjorth, 18, were taken into custody hours after the slaying by police who said a search of their hotel room found the alleged weapon, a military-style attack knife, hidden inside the room’s drop ceiling.

“It can’t be forgotten that the two were looking for drugs in the course of the evening and that both had drunk alcohol as they themselves declared,” the judge said in in her ruling, issued late Saturday.

“It’s a matter of circumstances which, evaluated together with their conduct, testifies to the total absence of self-control and critical ability of the two suspects, and, as a result, makes plain their elevated social danger.”

The judge said Elder told authorities he stabbed Cerciello Rega because he feared he was being strangled, but noted the teen didn’t have any marks on his neck indicating an attempted strangulation.

He said Elder also told investigators the officer never pulled out his pistol.

She also cited contradictions in the teens’ account: Elder told investigators that Natale-Hjorth hid the knife in the drop ceiling, while Natale-Hjorth told investigators he wasn’t aware of the stabbing until Elder woke him hours later in their hotel room and told them he had “used a knife” and then washed it.

Investigators said Saturday both teens had admitted their roles in Cerciello Rega’s death. Under Italian law, anyone who participated in a slaying can face murder charges.

Elder, the judge said, told investigators he didn’t realize the two men were police officers and believed they were sent by an Italian man whose knapsack and cellphone they had stolen a few hours earlier while trying to arrange a drug deal.

That man, identified as Sergio Brugiatelli, told investigators that two men with American accents approached him in Rome’s Trastevere district asking if he had 80 euros ($90) worth of cocaine to sell, according to the judge’s order.

Brugiatelli said he didn’t, but accompanied one of the teens, a blond he later identified as Natale-Hjorth, to a dealer in the neighborhood. Brugiatelli said the other teen, whom he later identified as Elder, sat waiting on a bench where Brugiatelli had left his bag and a cellphone.

According to Brugiatelli, the “blond youth” gave the dealer money for the drugs, but at the sight of approaching police officers, everyone scattered. He later told investigators that when he returned to the bench a friend told him that Elder had run off with his bag.

Brugiatelli said he dialed his cellphone number and one of the teens answered and demanded he bring 80 or 100 euros plus a gram of cocaine to a street near their hotel if he wanted the bag back.

After police were informed of the extortion attempt, Cerciello Rega and his partner, Andrea Varriale, were sent to the rendezvous point, the judge said.

Gallo noted that the teens claimed the officers didn’t show identification.

But, she said, Varriale told investigators both officers showed their badges and identified themselves as police. “But the pair, even before we could carry out any kind of check attacked us physically,” she quoted Varriale as saying.

She said Varriale told investigators Cerciello Rega yelled as he was struggling with Elder, “Stop, we’re Carabinieri. Enough.” He said Natale-Hjorth kicked, scratched and punched him to break away then both teens fled. Varriale said he saw his partner bleeding profusely from his left side. “Before falling to the ground, he told me, ‘They stabbed me,'” the judge quoted Varriale as saying. /gsg