Time.news – Sentence tolife imprisonment for the Americans Finnegan Lee Elder and Gabriel Natale Hjorth for the murder of the Deputy Brigadier of the Carabinieri Mario Cerciello Rega and the wounding of his colleague Andrea Varriale. This was decided by the first assize court of Rome after a 13-hour council chamber.
Upon reading the device of the sentence Rosa Maria Esilio, widow of the carabiniere, she burst into tears and she hugged Paolo, the victim’s brother, in an intense embrace.
“It was a severe sentence but corresponding to the atrocious crime that was committed. It is a penalty appropriate to the gravity of the fact, committed by two defendants who have not given any sign of repentance “, is the comment of the lawyer Franco Coppi, defender of the civil party of the Cerciello family.
“This sentence it’s a shame for Italy with judges who don’t want to see what happened during the investigation and during the process. I have never seen such a thing. We witnessed the usual tandem prosecutor-judges “. These are the harsh words of the lawyer Renato Borzone, defender of Finnegan Lee Elder.” There is a 19-year-old boy who was attacked “, added the criminal announced an appeal.
The deputy brigadier was killed with eleven stab wounds in just thirty seconds, his colleague Varriale slightly injured by the two young Californians on vacation in Rome, at the end of an evening that was supposed to be just a high alcohol and cocaine and instead turned into tragedy.
The ambush was carried out in a street in the Prati district on July 26, 2019. A story that was brought to trial in record time, just seven months after the facts, even if the prosecutor and the carabinieri took just 12 hours to locate and arrest the two Americans who had found accommodation not far from the scene of the attack, at the Le Meridien hotel.
The two boys defended themselves by saying they had attacked Cerciello and Varriale (who were in civilian clothes) without knowing that they belonged to the police and of having exchanged them for men sent by Sergio Brugiatelli from whom, a few hours before the crime, they had stolen a backpack to take revenge for having been cheated by the pusher of Trastevere Italo Pompei who, indicated to them by Brugiatelli himself, had given him crushed tachipirina to the instead of a gram of ‘snow’.
Brugiatelli had agreed with the two Americans a appointment to have the backpack returned in exchange for 100 euros and some drugs, but at that meeting Cerciello and Varriale show up and are brutally attacked. The first bleeds to death, the other, in a state of shock, calls for help. The Americans take the opportunity to escape and return to the hotel with due calm, ignoring being filmed by video surveillance cameras: in the false ceiling of their room they hide the murder weapon.
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