ROME: A US student on trial for killing an Italian policeman during a failed drug bust last year tearfully apologised on Wednesday, saying he would never forgive himself.

Finnegan Lee Elder, 20, read a statement in front of the Rome court in which he said the evening of July 26, 2019 was “the worst night of my life”, according to Italian news agencies at the hearing, which is closed to most media due to coronavirus restrictions.

Elder and friend Gabriel Natale-Hjorth face life sentences for murder.

Prosecutors say Mario Cerciello Rega was killed in an unprovoked nighttime attack after he and his partner, both in plain clothes, approached the two American friends on vacation in Italy, who had earlier tried to buy drugs.

Elder has admitted to stabbing policeman Mario Cerciello Rega several times with an eight-inch combat knife, but both he and Hjorth say they were jumped from behind by men they thought were drug dealers.

“I want to apologise to everyone, the Cerciello family and his friends,” Elder, in tears, told the court.

“To the whole world. That night was the worst night of my life and if I could go back and change things I would do it now, but I can’t,” he added.

“I want to say that that night was the worst night of my life, not because I am in prison, away from everyone,” he said.

“There are other reasons: I took a person’s life, I took a husband from his wife, I broke a bond between brothers. And I have taken a son from his mother.

Published in Dawn, September 17th, 2020