San Francisco parents break silence after son sentenced to life in slaying of Italian police officer in Rome
A California couple is speaking out for the first time since their son was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for murdering a police officer in Rome.
Leah and Ethan Elder told ABC’s “Good Morning America” they’re heartbroken over the incident and worried sick about their 21-year-old son Finnegan, saying he has a history of serious mental health issues.
“This tragedy that happened, it’s changed us all,” dad Ethan Elder said in the couple’s first interview since the verdict last Wednesday.
“We just want Finn to be able to survive this,” mom Leah Elder told ABC in the interview that aired Monday.
“He has a noted history of attempted suicide, and we’re really worried and really concerned. He was utterly devastated by the verdict, just devastated. It was completely unexpected for him,” she said.
“I understand that a man’s life was lost that night. I understand that Finnegan should serve some time,” Leah said. “I would like Finnegan to have some sort of sentence that’s proportionate and something that at least acknowledges his mental health issues.”
Finnegan was 19 years old in July 2019 when he and friend Gabriel Christian Natale-Hjorth, then 18, were vacationing in Rome and tried to buy cocaine in a failed, money-losing deal.
Italian authorities said the teenagers, who were classmates from the San Francisco area, were sold a fake substance and demanded that a man involved pay them 100 euros and a gram of cocaine to get his swiped backpack returned.
The man agreed but then contacted authorities, who organized a sting, police said.
Police officer Mario Cerciello Rega, 35, had just returned to duty from his honeymoon when he and his partner, Andrea Varriale, confronted the men at around 3 a.m. local time.
Both officers were in plainclothes during the pre-dawn encounter on a street near an upscale hotel in Rome where the young American tourists were staying, police said.
During his trial, Elder testified that he and Natale-Hjorth thought the cops were drug dealers when a scuffle ensued.
Elder admitted stabbing Cerciello Rega with his 7-inch combat knife but said he thought his life was in danger.
Elder and Natale-Hjorth were captured on surveillance video fleeing the scene, and investigators later found the knife and blood-soaked clothes hidden in the ceiling above the men’s hotel room, police said.
“He does not see a reason to lie,” Leah Elder said of her son in the ABC News interview. “From the moment Finn was detained, he has not changed his version of that night one iota.”
The worried mom testified in Rome last December, explaining her son once tried to take his own life with a suicide attempt at Torpedo Wharf, a pier on the San Francisco Bay near the Golden Gate Bridge.
“He struggles with anxiety and depression, and his current situation is really perilous,” she said.
Cerciello Rega’s widow, Rosa Maria Esilio, clutched a photo of her husband and wept in the courtroom after the jury convicted the men last week.
A life sentence is Italy’s most stringent punishment.
Leah Elder told ABC News she was stunned Natale-Hjorth received a conviction on identical charges and the same harsh punishment as her son.
“My heart breaks for that entire family,” she said.
