SAN FRANCISCO — The Latest on the investigation of a killing of an Italian police officer in Rome (all times local):
7:50 p.m.
The family of one of the two California teenagers held in the Rome slaying of a police officer is looking “forward to the truth coming out and our son coming home,” an attorney for the family said Saturday.
“We feel the public has an incomplete account of the true version of these events,” Craig Peters said.
Peters read the short statement in front of the home of Finnegan Elder’s parents in San Francisco in which he said the family also expressed their condolences to Carabinieri officer Mario Cerciello Rega. Peters, who spoke next to Elder’s parents, did not take questions after making the statement.
“We continue to hold his family in our thoughts and pray for them at this difficult time,” Peters said.
The statement came after Elder’s father, Ethan, returned from visiting his jailed 19-year-old son in Rome.
Italian prosecutors say Finnegan Elder confessed to knifing Carabinieri officer Mario Cerciello Rega during a July 26 scuffle.
According to court documents, Elder said he thought a strange man was strangling him and he didn’t know Cerciello Rega was a plainclothes police officer.
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4:12 p.m.
The father of one of the two California teenagers held in the Rome slaying of a police officer is expected to make a statement Saturday night after returning from seeing his jailed son in Italy.
The family of Finnegan Elder, 19, said the father, Ethan Elder, planned to speak to reporters outside his San Francisco home.
Italian prosecutors say Finnegan Elder confessed to knifing Carabinieri officer Mario Cerciello Rega during a July 26 scuffle.
According to court documents, Elder said he thought a strange man was strangling him and he didn’t know Cerciello Rega was a plainclothes police officer.
Cerciello Rega, 35, had returned from his honeymoon a few days earlier and was scheduled to be off work when he and a partner were assigned to respond to a small-scale extortion attempt involving a failed drug deal and a stolen backpack, Italian authorities have said.
The Associated Press
