A 19 year old American college student, Beau Solomon, was found dead in Italy’s Tiber River on Monday, just four days after he landed in the country for a student exchange program. He was declared missing the same day he arrived in the country.
Solomon who arrived in Rome on Thursday, went out to G-Bar near Piazza Trilussa with a group of friends that night and was reported missing the following day when he failed to show up for orientation.
Solomon was a second year student at the University of Wisconsin Madison where he studied personal finance as a major in his first year, was found wearing a bloodied shirt with a wound on his head, his wallet was stolen and $1,500 had been charged to his credit card in Milan, according to his brother Jake Solomon.
The College he was supposed to study at in Rome, John Cabot University, confirmed that the body was that of 19-year-old Beau Solomon and issued a statement.
“We express our most heartfelt condolences to the Solomon family and to all those who loved Beau,”
A statement from the university said it was “alerted by his roommate, who reported that he had lost contact with Beau around 1 a.m. on Friday morning … and was worried when he did not see Beau at orientation later that morning”
When Solomon’s family heard he was missing, they all went to Italy while John Cabot University contacted the Italian authorities, the U.S. Embassy and his U.S. college, its President Franco Pavoncello.
An Italian newspaper, ANSA, claimed that two people have come forward to say that they saw a man throw a person into the Tiber the night Solomon disappeared.
Beau’s older brother, Jake Solomon, said his brother was an athlete who successfully battled cancer for years as a child and overcame it only for him to end up dead this way.
This isn’t the first time there has been an incident like this at the same college. In 2012, a U.S. student was allegedly stabbed by his roommate, a fellow student at John Cabot University, after what police said was a night of alcohol and possible drug use. The stabbed student survived.
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Source: AP