Family upset that US youths get Italy's harshest sentence

When prosecutors sought indictment of two American teenagers for the fatal 2019 stabbing in Rome of an Italian paramilitary officer, they described them as being in cahoots from start to finish

ROME -- The family of one of two American youths, both convicted of a fatal stabbing during a scuffle with an Italian police officer, on Thursday blasted the jury for ordering Italy's harshest punishment of life imprisonment, a sentence frequently meted out to mobsters who assassinate state officials. Months after the July 26, 2019 slaying of Carabinieri Vice Brigadier Mario Cerciello Rega in Rome, prosecutors asked for indictments for the two teenage friends from California. They described them as being in cahoots from start to finish, even though only one of them wielded the knife in what their lawyers steadfastly contended was in self-defense. When trial ended Wednesday night, more than 14 months later, the jury convicted both on all charges and handed down life sentences — a ruling that U.S. lawyer Craig Peters called “a mockery of justice.” Finnegan Lee Elder, now 21, said that he stabbed the 35-year-old Cerciello Rega because he feared he was being strangled as the two scuffled on a Rome street. Gabriel Natale-Hjorth, now 20, testified that at his friend's request, he hid the knife in their hotel room after the stabbing.