US Youth Testifies He Stabbed Italian Officer in Defense

Finnegan Lee Elder, from the United States, walks past Rosa Maria Esilio, widow of slain Carabinieri military police officer Mario Cerciello Rega and his brother, prior to a hearing where he is accused of slaying a plainclothes Carabinieri officer in June 2019 while on vacation in Rome, Italy, on March 1, 2021. Alberto Pizzoli/Pool Photo via AP

ROME—A young American on trial in Rome for the slaying of an Italian police officer has told the court that he stabbed the victim because he feared he was being strangled by a thug.

Finnegan Lee Elder, 21, and a friend from California, Gabriel Natale-Hjorth, 20, are charged in the murder of a Carabinieri paramilitary officer Vice Brigadier Mario Cerciello Rega on a street near their hotel while vacationing in Rome in 2019.