ROME (AP) — A jury in Rome will soon be weighing the fate of two young American men, charged with slaying an Italian police officer while they were on vacation in 2019. The trial of Finnegan Lee Elder, now 21, and Gabriel Natale-Hjorth, now 20, began in February 2020, just as the pandemic was bearing down on Italy. They were taken into police custody on July 26, 2019, hours after Carabiniere Vice Brigadiere Mario Cerciello Rega was fatally knifed 11 times on a street near their hotel. The officer and his partner, both in plainclothes, were pursuing an alleged extortion attempt after a botched drug deal. Elder testified that he stabbed the officer in self-defense and both defendants said they thought the officers were thugs.
