Italian police arrest homeless man over US student death in Rome

Italian police arrested a homeless man on Tuesday over the death of an American student whose body was pulled from the Tiber River in Rome.

Beau Solomon, 19, from Wisconsin, was found on Monday near a bridge in the Italian capital after going missing in the early hours of Friday following an evening out in the hip Trastevere district.

Massimo Galioto, a 41-year-old homeless Italian, was arrested for manslaughter after he gave conflicting accounts of his whereabouts on the night in question, police said in a statement.

Witnesses told police they had seen a man throw someone into the river in the early hours of Friday.

The sports fan, who reportedly survived a rare form of cancer as a child and hoped to enter politics after university, had suffered a wound to the head and his shirt was bloodied, according to La Stampa daily.

His bank card had been used while he was missing by someone who withdrew over 1,500 euros ($1,675) in Milan, reports said.

Solomon, who was due to start a study abroad programme at John Cabot University, had arrived just hours earlier in Rome and gone out for drinks with fellow foreign students in the popular district near the river.

The alarm was sounded after he failed to turn up for his first classes the following day and his frantic relatives arrived in Rome on Monday just after his body was found and identified.

Source: AFP