Murder investigation opens into death of American university student.

A murder investigation is underway after the body of missing 19-year-old American student Beau Solomon was discovered in the river Tiber, near Ponte Marconi, on 4 July.

Solomon went missing in the early hours of Friday 1 July, hours after arriving in Rome, during a night out in the Piazza Trilussa area of the Trastevere district.

The visiting student from the University of Wisconsin-Madison was due to begin a summer course at Rome’s John Cabot University on 1 July but was reported missing by university authorities when he failed to attend the orientation course.

Italian media reported that injuries were discovered on Solomon's body and that some $1,500 was spent using his credit cards immediately after he went missing. His wallet and telephone were also taken. Police are now studying closed circuit television footage in an attempt to retrace his last steps.

The incident has drawn comparisons to that of another American student who died in April 2015, three months after falling off the Tiber parapet at Lungotevere dei Vallati. The 20-year-old University of Iowa student was seriously injured following a night out, just hours after arriving in Rome to begin a semester at an American university in Trastevere.

In June 2013, a 21-year-old American also fell to his death after a night out, apparently slipping off the embankment wall along the Lungotevere dei Tebaldi, near Ponte Sisto.

Other tragic cases involving foreign students in Rome include another 21-year-old American student who died in a railway tunnel near St Peter’s in February 2014 and the 19-year-old Australian who was found dead on the banks of the Tiber in 2009 after taking part in an organised pub crawl.