Two American students have been sentenced to life in prison by a Rome court for the murder of Italian police officer Mario Cerciello Rega. After almost 13 hour of deliberation, a jury convicted Finnegan Lee Elder, 21, and Gabriel Natale-Hjorth, 20, of murdering Cerciello Rega, who had only just returned to duty after his honeymoon when he was stabbed to death, aged 35, on a street in central Rome in July 2019. A state funeral was held for the.
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They are not mafia bosses who kill innocent people : Families of two California students sentenced to life for stabbing to death Italian cop slam Italian justice system
Finnegan Lee Elder, 21, and Gabriel Natale Hjorth, 20, were convicted by a jury in Rome on Wednesday over the murder of Vice Brigadier Mario Cerciello Rega, 35
Elder stabbed Rega 11 times with a 7-inch Rambo knife on July 26, 2019 after a drug deal went awry
Natale-Hjorth, whom Elder knew from high school in Mill Valley, California, helped hide the knife
Elder family spokesman Craig Peters blasted the jury for handing them the same sentence given to mobsters
Italian jury convicts 2 Americans in slaying of police officer
The jury deliberated more than 12 hours before delivering the verdicts late Wednesday against 21-year-pld Finnegan Lee Elder and 20-year-old Gabriel Natale.
Credit: AP
Finnegan Lee Elder listens as the verdict is read, in the trial for the slaying of an Italian plainclothes police officer in summer 2019, in Rome, Wednesday, May 5, 2021. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia) Author: Associated Press Updated: 5:31 PM CDT May 5, 2021
A jury in Rome on Wednesday convicted two American friends in the 2019 slaying of a police officer in a tragic unraveling of a small time drug deal gone bad, sentencing them to life in prison.