2 Acquitted in Italy in ’94 Shooting Death of U.S. Boy, 7

CATANZARO, Italy — Two Italians were cleared Thursday of murdering a 7-year-old American boy who became a symbol of compassion in Italy when his parents donated his organs to save seven lives.

A court in Catanzaro, in the southern region of Calabria, acquitted Francesco Mesiano, 23, and Michele Iannello, 28, of murder in the shooting death of Nicholas Green during an attempted highway robbery.

Prosecutors said they planned to appeal.

Nicholas, from Bodega Bay, Calif., was on a holiday with his family when their rented car was chased and shot at on a highway in September 1994. He was hit in the head and died two days later.

Mesiano cried when the verdict was read. He later approached the boy’s father, Reginald, in the courtroom and shook his hand.

“We’ve always said we wanted justice, not revenge,” Green said afterward.

“It was always going to be a difficult conviction to get because of the circumstances, which were a car with masked men in it suddenly came out of the dark and, after firing a few shots, disappeared back into the dark,” he said.

The trial had been “a relatively small part in the Nicholas story,” he said. “The main thing that has happened since Nicholas’ death is that it has inspired this outpouring of compassion all over the world, and on a practical level, the increase in donations in organs.”