Two U.S. students on trial over killing of police officer
ROME » The lives of two American teenagers and two Italian law enforcement officers crossed paths for less than a minute in the early hours of July 26, 2019.
Yet the consequences of that brief encounter began to be played out on Wednesday when the two Americans — Finnegan Elder, now 20, and Gabriel Natale Hjorth, now 19 — went on trial for the murder of Deputy Brig. Mario Cerciello Rega of the carabinieri, Italy’s paramilitary police force.
The circumstances that led to the ill-fated 32-second aggression, the time estimated by court documents, remain unclear, though much of the evidence is overwhelming. The two teenagers were arrested and jailed just hours after the fact, the murder weapon found in their possession.
Ultimately the jury will be asked to deliberate whether the two Americans were aware that Cerciello Rega, who was 35 when he died, and his partner, Carabinieri Officer Andrea Varriale, were plainclothes officers.
Prosecutors say the teenagers attacked the officers to avoid arrest, while the teenagers say they acted in self-defense, believing the two plainclothes officers to be ill-intentioned heavies.
“We have diametrically opposed hypotheses of the dynamics of that night,” said Fabio Alonzi, a lawyer for Natale Hjorth. “The question is to see which hypothesis has more supporting evidence.”
The immediate public outpouring of grief for Cerciello Rega was sincere, if stoked by nationalist lawmakers fueling the perception — often not borne out by facts — of a country at the mercy of drug dealers, petty criminals and lawless immigrants. His funeral, broadcast on national television, became a state affair attended by government officials and other authorities.
For investigators — the Nucleo Investigativo Carabinieri of Rome, officers who are part of the same military corps as the victim — it was a clear-cut case.
The killing of Cerciello Rega, they say, was the culmination of a series of fateful events that unfolded that muggy summer night after the two teenagers set off to buy drugs in Rome’s trendy Trastevere area, and the deal went bad.
Shortly after midnight, four off-duty carabinieri singled them out in Piazza Trilussa. In text messages to each other, they described them as “polli,” or chickens, which in Italian refers to someone who is easily duped.
The teenagers found a middleman, Sergio Brugiatelli, a habitue of the Trastevere nightlife, who offered to hook them up with a dealer. The off-duty carabinieri tailed them as they walked to Piazza Mastai, about 10 minutes away.
No sooner had Natale Hjorth handed over 80 euros, about $87, to the dealer than the off-duty officers interrupted the deal, identifying themselves as carabinieri, according to the investigators’ report.
Natale Hjorth told Elder that he hadn’t believed them.
Last week, several Italian newspapers published parts of the transcript, revealing that the translations used by the carabinieri to bolster their case were misleading, while some passages that favored the defense case had been omitted. Alonzi said the investigators had “made some glaring errors.”
As they fled from Trastevere, Natale Hjorth and Elder took Brugiatelli’s backpack, which he had left on a bench.
In the transcript, Elder said they had taken the backpack because they were angry that they had been duped.
“We are absolutely certain that the two boys — especially Finn, who doesn’t speak a word of Italian — had no idea that they were policemen,” said Renato Borzone, another Italian lawyer for Elder.
If the Americans are found guilty, they risk spending their life behind bars.
Both have been severely tried by nearly seven months in prison, their lawyers and family say.