The brother of an American teenager found dead in the river Tiber in Rome has said authorities are investigating whether he was robbed and murdered.
Cole Solomon, Beau Solomon’s 23-year-old brother, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that investigators were treating his death as murder. His brother had suffered a head wound and there was blood on his shirt. Cole said thousands of dollars had been charged to Beau’s credit card after his disappearance.
On Monday morning, police in Rome said they had arrested a man in connection with the case. Massimo Galioto, a 40-year-old from Rome of no fixed address, was stopped overnight on murder charges and is the prime suspect in the case, police said in a statement.
Beau Solomon, 19, had arrived in the Italian capital on Thursday evening to attend a university summer school and went missing later that night after going out with fellow students.
The group had walked about 10 minutes from John Cabot University accommodation to G-Bar in the Trastevere neighbourhood, a picturesque area popular with American students and tourists, where Solomon was last seen at about 1am.
Assuming he had gone home, the students returned to their residence. On realising Solomon was missing, they returned to the bar to look for him. The alarm was raised on Friday after he failed to turn up for registration at the university.
His body was discovered by the Guglielmo Marconi bridge, about three miles downriver from Trastavere.
The student’s parents, Jodi and Nick Solomon, received a bank alert at about 4am on Friday, informing them of a transaction of about $2.23 (€2, £1.70). A quick succession of larger charges followed, including a purchase of clothing and a transaction in Milan.
The Solomons were unable to phone their son as his US phone number would not work, although they had spoken to him shortly after he arrived in Italy.
“Everything’s so pretty. It’s so beautiful,” he told his mother, shortly after going out that evening.
The student also replied to a request from his father for an update on Rome life, which was received at about 11pm on Thursday. “So amazing here,” the message said.
Solomon’s parents arrived in Rome on Monday, having travelled from their home in Spring Green, Wisconsin, on emergency passports.
Speaking to the Guardian, they described their son as a rule follower who was determined to sprint through his studies and graduate within three years. Solomon had just finished his first year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he majored in personal finance. He had taken Italian classes in preparation for the six-week summer school at John Cabot.
Before Solomon travelled to Rome, his parents had advised him on how to look after his possessions while in Rome. “The only doubts we had were pickpocketing,” his father said.
Beau was the third of four boys. His brothers have remained at home in Wisconsin while their parents travelled to Italy. Jake Solomon described his younger sibling as an active member of the community and said he had wanted to become a politician.
“He’s an amazing kid,” he told WMTV on Sunday.
The discovery of Solomon’s body came two years after another American student was found dead after disappearing on a night out in Rome. The body of John Durkin, 21, was found in a train tunnel in February 2014. He had gone missing two days earlier after going out with friends in Campo de’ Fiori, a nightlife hotspot in the centre of the city.
An economics student at Bates College in Maine, Durkin had arrived in Italy a month earlier as part of a study abroad programme arranged through Trinity College in Connecticut.
Map showing locations pertaining to the robbery of Beau Solomon. 
Map showing scene and bar locations pertaining to the robbery of Beau Solomon. 

On Tuesday,  police charged homeless forty-year-old Massimo Galioto with the aggravated murder of Beau Solomon, a college student from Wisconsin, US. The police arrested the man after finding the student's body in the  in  on Monday. The defendant has attorney Michele Vincelli.

According to reports, Massimo Galioto is homeless and lived in a tent under a bridge. Italian police said two witnesses reported they saw someone being thrown from the Garibaldi bridge into the Tiber River. The authorities also reportedly obtained CCTV footage near the bank of the river, showing the incident.

A homeless woman sharing a tent with Massimo Galioto said she saw Massimo Galioto and Beau Solomon fighting each-other, and then saw Beau Solomon fall into the river. The woman alleged Beau Solomon was drunk and the company included two people from North Africa.

On Monday, Italian police found Beau Solomon's body near Guglielmo Marconi bridge about three miles (five kilometres) downstream from Trastevere, where the student was last seen at about 1AM in G-Bar in ''Piazza Trilussa'' on Friday night after his first day in Italy. Solomon was beginning a  at . His parents arrived on Monday using emergency passports.

The body had no mobile device or wallet, suggesting to local authorities it was a robbery. The body also had a head wound and bloody shirt, the victim's 23-year-old brother Cole Solomon told the '''' on Monday.

Last week on Friday morning, Beau Solomon's parents received bank alerts. According to the student's brother Jake Solomon, the bank told his parents Beau's bank card was charged "thousands of dollars". Authorities later confirmed the amount as about 1,500  (about 1700). The credit card of the victim was charged in  over 300 miles away from Rome on Friday.

Beau Solomon was aged 19. He came to Italy to attend summer school on Thursday. Beau Solomon did not attend university  next morning, and the institution reported him missing to the local authorities at 9PM.