US teens on trial in Rome over killing of officer

The trial in the case of two American teenagers accused of slaying an Italian police officer in Rome opened in the Italian capital on Wednesday.

Finnegan Lee Elder and friend Gabriel Natale-Hjorth are accused in the fatal stabbing of the officer in July 2019, a few hours after a drug deal gone wrong.

Carabinieri officer Mario Cerciello Rega was stabbed 11 times and his fellow plainclothes officer was assaulted in a scuffle with the Americans, prosecutors say.

They allege that Elder knifed Cerciello Rega and that Natale-Hjorth assaulted the other officer.

Both Americans, who come from northern California, have insisted they feared the officers, who they claim they didn't know were police, were going to harm them and thus acted to defend themselves.

Italian police maintains the two policemen identified themselves as police agents.

(Pic Credit: Pixabay)