SEATTLE – Amanda Knox returned home to Seattle on Tuesday, one day after an Italian court cleared the 24-year-old college student of murder and freed her from prison.
An aircraft carrying Ms Knox, who grew up in a close-knit west Seattle neighbourhood where both of her divorced parents still live, landed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport shortly after 5pm local time. Ms Knox wiped away tears minutes after she stepped off the plane.
“They are reminding me to speak in English because I’m having trouble with that,” said Ms Knox. “I’m really overwhelmed right now. I was looking down from the airplane and it seemed like everything wasn’t real.”
The former University of Washington student thanked “everyone who has believed in me, who has defended me . . . I just want my family. That’s the most important thing to me right now, and I just want to go be with them.”
Anne Bremner, a Seattle defence attorney and spokeswoman for Friends of Amanda Knox, said that, according to her family, Ms Knox was looking forward to having a backyard barbecue, being outside on the grass, playing soccer and seeing old friends. “Just normal things that you would want to do after being in prison for four years for a crime you didn’t do,” she said.
The appeals court in Perugia overturned Ms Knox’s 2009 conviction for murdering her housemate, 21-year-old Meredith Kercher, in what prosecutors claimed said was a drug-fuelled sexual assault. Also cleared was Ms Knox’s former boyfriend, Rafaele Sollecito, leaving Ivorian drifter Rudy Guede as the only person convicted in a killing which investigators believe was carried out by more than one person.
Students and teachers at the private Explorer Middle School, where Ms Knox attended sixth, seventh and eighth grades, were delighted at her release.Ms Knox won the school’s first Manvel Schauffler Award, named after a founder of the school, which has about 100 students who pay an annual average tuition of about $15,000, said Debbie Ehri, the school’s business manager.
“It was our first award for our most outstanding student. Amanda was an academically strong student. She was genuinely a lovely, kind and talented student,” Ms Ehri said. “Teachers absolutely adored her. She was just delightful to have in class. She was caring, not only with her studies, but she was a kind, lovely girl.” – (Reuters)