San Francisco man claims self-defense in Italian officer’s death
ROME >> A 21-year-old San Francisco man on trial in the death of an Italian police officer told a court in Rome that he “panicked” and believed the officer, who he said did not identify himself, would kill him.
The man, Finnegan Elder, spoke publicly for the first time Monday, to give his version of the events that led to the death of Deputy Brig. Mario Cerciello Rega, a 35-year-old, newly married officer in the Carabinieri, Italy’s national military police force, in July 2019.
Clutching several handwritten sheets of paper, his hand trembling at times, Elder said he had been acting in self-defense when he repeatedly stabbed the man who had just tackled him to the ground and was trying to restrain him.
“I remember little of the next few moments except for feelings of shock and terror,” Elder said. “I do remember, however, that I could feel his hands pressing on my chest and then on my neck with pressure, as if he were trying to strangle or choke me. At this stage, I panicked and believed he wanted to kill me. As soon as I felt his hands squeezing my neck, I instinctively brought out my knife and hit him three times in an effort to get him off me.”
Panicked, he switched the hand with which he was holding the knife and stabbed him again, he said. “All this lasted a few seconds,” he said.
Elder was addressing the court during the final scheduled hearing of a yearlong trial that has grabbed headlines in Italy and the United States, in part because of the young age of those involved.
Elder is on trial with Gabriel Natale-Hjorth, 20, a San Francisco school friend he had joined for two days in Rome during the last leg of a summer trip in Europe.
Cerciello Rega’s death capped a chaotic evening that began when the two Americans decided to go to a trendy downtown Rome neighborhood to buy cocaine.
“I thought that it would be something that would help us enjoy the night, and from past experience, I thought the effect of the drug would make us feel better and give us some energy to walk around to get to bars and pubs,” Elder told the court.