The 20-year-old USAF solider was based at the Aviano air force base near Pordenone, however the US usually tries its own citizens back in the States, even if they have committed crimes abroad.
A case in point was the Cermis cable car disaster near Aviano in 1998, in which the US pilots who flew too low and cut a cable, plunging 20 people to their deaths, were acquitted of manslaughter in the US, straining relations with Italy.
“That woman must be tried in Italy and serve her full term,” said Barbara Scandella, mother of Giovanni Zanier, the victim of the incident near Pordenone early on Sunday morning.
The soldier, 20-year-old Julia Bravo, was found to have a blood alcohol level four times the legal limit in Italy.
She faced a hearing to uphold her arrest warrant later on Tuesday. Bravo, who was driving back from a night out, reportedly lost control of her car after a roundabout and hit Giovanni Zanier on a cycling path at around 2:30am in the morning.
Zanier’s mother had told him to walk back from the bar he had attended with two friends even though his home was several kilometres away. The two friends were not hurt in the crash.
Bravo has been placed under house arrest, charged with vehicular homicide. The local council in Porcia recently ordered street lights in the area to be turned off at 2:00am, but police said the accident probably wouldn’t have been averted, even with the lights on.
An eye witness who came out of the same disco as Bravo reportedly told police on Tuesday that “that woman was completely drunk when she took the wheel. She couldn’t even turn the ignition on”, reported the Gazzettino newspaper.
Bravo drove off in a direction that was diametrically opposite the Aviano base, the witness said.
