An American tourist convicted and jailed for the murder of a police officer in Rome has been moved to house arrest, in a decision that has left the victim’s widow “totally shocked”, her lawyer said. Gabriel Christian Natale-Hjorth and his friend Finnegan Lee Elder were given life sentences for the 2019 murder of Mario Cerciello Rega, 35, a Carabinieri police officer who was stabbed to death after a botched drug deal. Their initial sentences were repeatedly trimmed as the case bounced around courts in Italy’s multitiered trial system, and this month an appeals court ruled that Natale-Hjorth should serve a term of 11 years and four-month term. Natale-Hjorth did not handle the knife during the attack but was tussling with another police officer as Elder was stabbing Cerciello Rega, according to court documents. Elder eventually received a term of 15 years and two months and remains in prison. The judicial sources said judges granted Natale-Hjorth house arrest on the request of his lawyers and he would remain under detention at his grandmother’s house in a town near Rome. There were no immediate details on the reasons for the decision. Cerciello Rega’s widow, Rosa Maria Esilio, was “totally shocked by the news” of the house arrest, her lawyer Massimo Ferrandino said in a statement. The two Americans, both from California, had tried to buy drugs during a holiday in Rome. They have said they were cheated and grabbed a bag belonging to an intermediary of the dealer as he tried to escape, the court documents said. They later agreed to a meeting with the dealer to swap the bag for the money but two police officers showed up in plainclothes instead, the documents said. Italian media reported that the dealer was a police informer. Elder and Natale-Hjorth’s lawyers argued that the two acted in self-defence because they thought the two police officers were thugs who were out to get them. Prosecutors will be able to appeal against the latest sentences before Italy’s highest court.