Story By: Lee Bullen, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency:  Newsflash

Four African men accused of being drug dealers are on trial in Italy for raping and killing this 16-year-old schoolgirl and then dumping her body in an abandoned construction site when she apparently visited them to buy drugs in 2018.

The building was used by homeless people and down and outs as well as drug dealers, and the four men apparently said it was better to leave her to die than to have her testifying against them.

Victim Desiree Mariottini from Cisterna di Latina in the Italian region of Lazio was found dead after being drugged and raped in the construction site in the district of San Lorenzo in October 2018.

A witness claims that the 16-year-old girl went to the abandoned site to buy drugs.

Narcisa Leon, an Ecuadorian woman who squatted in the abandoned site, told the court that she found the victim lying motionless on a dirty mattress after seeing her with the four defendants earlier in the day.

The four African suspects, whose specific nationalities have not been disclosed, have been named as Yusif Salia, Mamadou Gara, Brian Minteh, and Chima Alinno.

They are accused of giving the victim a cocktail of drugs before raping her in turn and leaving her to die.

According to Leon, one of the defendants said “better she is dead than us be in prison”.

Other people who were apparently squatting at the site knew that the girl was badly hurt but did nothing after hearing what the suspected drug dealers had said.

Leon claimed that the suspects wanted the teenage girl to die to escape possible jail time.

She also said that one of the suspects, Mamadou Gara, confirmed in a conversation with her that they had given the victim a strong tranquiliser and that he had then had “sex with her”.

The case is ongoing.

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