The Latest: Teen said strangling fear made him knife officer

The Latest on the fatal stabbing of a police officer in Rome and two American teenagers jailed in the slaying (all times local):

3:55 p.m.

An Italian judge says one of the two American teenagers jailed in Rome for the slaying of a police officer has stated he stabbed the plainclothes officer because he feared he was being strangled.

Judge Chiara Gallo wrote in an order upholding the jailing of the two California residents that Finnegan Lee Elder told authorities he knifed Carabinieri officer Mario Cerciello Rega after he felt pressure on his neck.

But the judge said in her Saturday order that the 19-year-old did not have any marks on his neck indicating strangulation. The Associated Press obtained the order on Monday.

Gallo said the young man’s friend and travel companion, 18-year-old Gabriel Christian Natale-Hjorth, told investigators that Elder informed him back at their hotel he had used a knife and then washed it.

The officer was stabbed 11 times and died shortly after on Friday.

The judge concluded the two Americans had a “total absence of self-control” and were highly dangerous.

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1:30 p.m.

An Italian paramilitary police officer, allegedly slain by two American teens in Rome, has been hailed as a hero at his funeral in his hometown near Naples.

Mario Cerciello Rega was fatally stabbed 11 times near the hotel where the Americans were staying while he was investigating a drug deal gone wrong. Monday’s funeral was held in the same church in Somma Vesuviana where he has married six weeks ago.

Italy’s military chaplain, Archbishop Santo Marciano, in his eulogy, said Cerciello Rega, 35, lived and died to safeguard others’ lives.

Californians Gabriel Christian Natale-Hjorth, 18, and Finnegan Lee Elder, 19, are jailed for investigation of the officer’s murder.

Police are investigating both Natale-Hjorth’s illegal blindfolding before his interrogation after Friday’s slaying and who leaked the photo of him blindfolded.