The brother of an American teenager found dead in the river Tiber in Rome has said authorities are investigating whether he was robbed and murdered.
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| Italian police inspect the banks of the river Tiber in Rome where Beau Solomon’s body was found. |
Cole Solomon, Beau Solomon’s 23-year-old brother, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that investigators were treating his death as murder. His brother had suffered a head wound and there was blood on his shirt. Cole said thousands of dollars had been charged to Beau’s credit card after his disappearance.
On Monday morning, police in Rome said they had arrested a man in connection with the case. Massimo Galioto, a 40-year-old from Rome of no fixed address, was stopped overnight on murder charges and is the prime suspect in the case, police said in a statement.
Beau Solomon, 19, had arrived in the Italian capital on Thursday evening to attend a university summer school and went missing later that night after going out with fellow students.
The group had walked about 10 minutes from John Cabot University accommodation to G-Bar in the Trastevere neighbourhood, a picturesque area popular with American students and tourists, where Solomon was last seen at about 1am.
Assuming he had gone home, the students returned to their residence. On realising Solomon was missing, they returned to the bar to look for him. The alarm was raised on Friday after he failed to turn up for registration at the university.
His body was discovered by the Guglielmo Marconi bridge, about three miles downriver from Trastavere.
The student’s parents, Jodi and Nick Solomon, received a bank alert at about 4am on Friday, informing them of a transaction of about $2.23 (€2, £1.70). A quick succession of larger charges followed, including a purchase of clothing and a transaction in Milan.
The Solomons were unable to phone their son as his US phone number would not work, although they had spoken to him shortly after he arrived in Italy.
“Everything’s so pretty. It’s so beautiful,” he told his mother, shortly after going out that evening.
The student also replied to a request from his father for an update on Rome life, which was received at about 11pm on Thursday. “So amazing here,” the message said.
Solomon’s parents arrived in Rome on Monday, having travelled from their home in Spring Green, Wisconsin, on emergency passports.
Speaking to the Guardian, they described their son as a rule follower who was determined to sprint through his studies and graduate within three years. Solomon had just finished his first year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he majored in personal finance. He had taken Italian classes in preparation for the six-week summer school at John Cabot.
Before Solomon travelled to Rome, his parents had advised him on how to look after his possessions while in Rome. “The only doubts we had were pickpocketing,” his father said.
Beau was the third of four boys. His brothers have remained at home in Wisconsin while their parents travelled to Italy. Jake Solomon described his younger sibling as an active member of the community and said he had wanted to become a politician.
“He’s an amazing kid,” he told WMTV on Sunday.
The discovery of Solomon’s body came two years after another American student was found dead after disappearing on a night out in Rome. The body of John Durkin, 21, was found in a train tunnel in February 2014. He had gone missing two days earlier after going out with friends in Campo de’ Fiori, a nightlife hotspot in the centre of the city.
An economics student at Bates College in Maine, Durkin had arrived in Italy a month earlier as part of a study abroad programme arranged through Trinity College in Connecticut.
guardian
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