PERUGIA, Italy — An American student who denies murdering her British roommate testified Saturday that she was shocked by the death of a woman she considered her friend, and said a “crescendo” of police pressure led her to accuse an innocent man.
Amanda Knox of Seattle had told the court Friday that she was not in the apartment she shared with Meredith Kercher when the British woman was slain in 2007.
She said it was police pressure that led her to accuse Diya “Patrick” Lumumba, a Congolese man who owns a pub in Perugia, of the killing. Lumumba was jailed briefly but was later cleared and is seeking defamation damages from Knox.
Knox said that interrogators “wanted a name” and that a policewoman hit her twice on the head. “Do you remember? Do you remember? And then boom! On the head,” Knox said. “I went: mamma mia! And then again, another boom!”
She said it was that pressure that made her come up with Lumumba’s name.
