Teen’s father to make statement after visit to Rome prison
Posted August 3, 2019 6:53 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
SAN FRANCISCO — The father of a California teenager held in the Rome slaying of a police officer is expected to make a statement after returning from seeing his jailed son in Italy.
The family of 19-year-old Finnegan Elder said the father, Ethan Elder, planned to speak to reporters outside his San Francisco home on Saturday night.
Italian prosecutors say Finnegan Elder confessed to knifing Carabinieri officer Mario Cerciello Rega during a July 26 scuffle.
According to court documents, Elder said he thought a strange man was strangling him and he didn’t know Cerciello Rega was a plainclothes police officer.
His father said after their jailhouse visit Friday that his son “is struggling but holding up.”
Elder’s friend, 18-year-old Gabriel Natale-Hjorth, also is in custody. Prosecutors allege he punched and kicked the officer’s partner.
The Associated Press
