Police hold illegal migrant over killing of US woman
ROME: Italian police announced Thursday that a Senegalese migrant had been arrested in the killing of a young US woman found dead in her Florence apartment last weekend.
The mysterious circumstances of the death of Ashley Ann Olsen, 35, of Florida, immediately drew global attention. Her body was discovered on Saturday morning by her boyfriend, who alerted the police.
Investigators said Thursday that Olsen had met the suspect — Cheik Tidiane Diaw, a 27-year-old Senegalese who is in the country illegally — at a Florence nightclub on t he evening of Jan 7. Witnesses saw the two leave the club together, and street cameras recorded them returning to her apartment early Jan 8. Investigators said they had consensual sex before Olsen was killed.
DNA analysis of a condom and a cigarette butt discovered in Olsen’s bathroom, as well as other biological evidence, suggested that Mr Diaw and Olsen had been the only two people in the apartment at that time. Mr Diaw also stole Olsen’s smartphone and used it, investigators said.
Giuseppe Creazzo, chief prosecutor of Florence, said in a televised news conference that Mr Diaw had been questioned for several hours and had “substantially admitted to the accusations”. Mr Creazzo said that he did not know what Mr Diaw’s motives might have been, but he suggested that the two might have had an argument.
“The investigation is not over,” Mr Creazzo said, “but they are obviously at a good, excellent point.”
Investigators are examining whether drugs played a role in the events leading up to Olsen’s killing, and tests are being conducted.
The police said that Olsen had suffered two fractures to the skull and was subsequently strangled with a cord, wire or other object.
Mr Diaw was arrested late Wednesday in his brother’s apartment in Florence where he moved a few months ago, the police said, and he had been hired to distribute leaflets for nightclubs.
Early local news reports had suggested that Mr Diaw had dealt drugs, but the police said there was no evidence of this.
Olsen’s death came a week after Europe was shaken by reports of rape and sexual harassment on New Year’s Eve in Cologne, Germany.