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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