FACING HIS FATE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15718, 19 September 1914, Page 2 (Supplement)

FACING HIS FATE.

ITALIAN YOUTH'S CRIME.

Just a good-looking, dark-eyed Italian boy of 19, but in a few words conveyed to the Croydon justices that he is hero and "villain" a;nd victim in a terrible life drama. At home in Italy the doom of 15 years' imprisonment, under the rigours of Italian gaols, awaits him. And he will face it.

The youth, who said his name was Amedo Saleno, and he came from Buston Arsizio, walked into Croydon police station and told the police he was a murderer, and the man he had killed was his brother.

He was the second son of his mother, who had a small stationer's shop in the village, he said. His elder 'brother was not a good son to their mother he had evil friends, and used to demand all his mother's money from her. When it was gone he would return and threaten her for

more. So one day, when the brother came, the boy crept up behind him when he was robbing his mother, and stabbed him in the back. Then lie fled. He had not meant to kill his brother, but in bis hiding-place he got a newspaper next day, and read that his brother was dead. He fled then from the law, and escaped into Switzerland. Last December he made his way to England, and found work in Croydon.

A few days ago he received an Italian newspaper. In it he read that he had been tried in Ilia absence for his brother's murder, and the judge had sentenced him to undergo imprisonment for 15 years. For many months, though free and safe, he had suffered from the knowledge that his mother had now no sons, for he who should be a son was a fugitive fratricide. Thus ho reasoned to himself that he must brave the penalty. If he survived the prison he would emerge a man of more than 30 years, able then to be again a son, for he hoped that his mother would live till he had paid the due. He silently accepted the magistrate's decision to remand him for extradition to his country.