Italian Court Hands 2 US Tourists Life Sentences for Murdering Police Officer as Teens

Finnegan Lee Elder (R) shows a crucifix to co-defendant Gabriel Natale-Hjorth before a jury began deliberating their fate in their trial for the slaying of an Italian plainclothes police officer on a street near the hotel where they were staying while on vacation in Rome in summer 2019, in Rome, on May 5, 2021. Gregorio Borgia/AP Photo

ROME—Two American tourists were sentenced to life in prison by an Italian court on Wednesday for the 2019 murder of a policeman near their Rome hotel in a case that shook the nation.

Finnegan Lee Elder, who was 19 at the time, had admitted to stabbing Mario Cerciello Rega in the early hours of July 26, 2019, while his friend Gabriel Christian Natale-Hjorth, then 18, was tussling with another police officer.