American convicted in killing of Italian plainclothes officer gets house arrest after appeal

ROME — One of the two Americans convicted in the 2019 stabbing death of an Italian plainclothes police officer has been granted house arrest after an appeals court significantly reduced his original life sentence.

Gabriel Natale-Hjorth can serve his 11-year, four-month sentence at the home of a grandparent in the seaside town of Fregene, west of Rome, state-run RAI and LaPresse news agencies reported, citing a court decision Monday.

Natale-Hjorth and Finnegan Lee Elder, both from California, had been found guilty in the July 2019 killing of Carabinieri Vice Brigadier Mario Cerciello Rega in a botched sting operation after a Rome drug deal went bad. After the first trial, were both sentenced to life in prison, Italy’s harshest penalty.

Italy’s highest Cassation Court last year ordered a new trial, ruling that it hadn’t been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the Americans, with limited Italian-language skills, had understood that they were dealing with Italian police officers when they went to meet the alleged drug dealer.

An appeals court earlier this month upheld their convictions but greatly reduced their original sentences. Elder, who wielded the knife, is serving his sentence of 15 years and two months in prison.

Teenagers at the time of the killing, the former schoolmates from the San Francisco Bay area had met up in Rome to spend a few days vacationing. The fatal confrontation took place after they arranged to meet a small-time drug dealer, who turned out to have been a police informant, to recover money lost in a bad drug deal. Instead, they were confronted by two officers.

Cerciello Riga was stabbed 11 times with a knife brought from the hotel room.