Retrial starts for 2 Bay Area men Finn Elder and Gabriel Natale-Hjorth, convicted in fatal stabbing of Italian police officer [Video]

ROME, Italy (KGO) — A new trial began Friday for former Marin high school classmates who were convicted in the death of a plainclothes police officer in Rome, July 2019.

They got the new trial over the issue of language. Finnegan Elder said from the start that he didn’t know the two men who jumped him were police, and he couldn’t understand Italian. The highest court agreed and sent it back to the Court of Appeal in Rome today.

San Francisco’s Finnegan Elder and Marin County’s Gabriel Natale-Hjorth are being kept in separate prisons near Rome. As the Court of Appeal hearing began Friday, Elder seemed to try to catch Natale’s eye, but he stared straight ahead.

The two were on vacation in July 2019, when Natale-Hjorth tried to buy cocaine, but police broke up the deal. As they ran away, Elder grabbed one of the dealer’s backpacks that contained a cell phone. The …