(ANSA) - ROME, AUG 24 - The commander of the 31st Fighter Wing at the USAF base at Aviano (Pordenone), Brigadier Generale Tad D. Clark, on Wednesday expressed his condolences to the parents of a 15-year-old Italian boy knocked over and killed by an allegedly drunk US aircraftswoman on a cycle path not far from the base on Saturday night-Sunday morning.
    "I express the sympathies of our community for this tragedy," Clark said in a private meeting.
    "We are really involved in your huge pain".
    Clark said US institutions will stay close to the family in the future, also.
    Julia Bravo, the 20-year-old aircraftswoman who allegedly knocked over and killed Giovanni Zanier, must be tried in Italy and not the US, the boy's mother said Tuesday.
    The US usually tries its own citizens back in the States even if they have committed crimes abroad.
    A case in point was the Cermis cable car disaster near Aviano in 1998 in which the US pilots who flew too low and cut a cable plunging 20 people to their deaths were acquitted of manslaughter in the US, straining relations with Italy.
    Another case was the 2005 shooting at a Baghdad checkpoint of an Italian intelligence officer, Nicola Calipari.
    "That woman must be tried in Italy and serve her full term," said Barbara Scandella, mother of Giovanni Zanier.
    Bravo was reportedly found to have a blood alcohol level four times the legal limit in Italy, police said.
    The woman, who was driving back from a night out, reportedly lost control of her car after a roundabout and hit Zanier on a cycle path at around two thirty in the morning. Zanier's mother had told him to walk back from the bar he had attended with two friends even though his home was several kilometres away.
    The two friends were unhurt in the crash.
    Bravo has been arrested and placed under house arrest, charged with vehicular homicide.
    The local council at Porcia recently ordered street lights in the spot to be turned off at two a.m., but police said the accident would probably not have been averted even with the lights on.
    An eye witness who came out of the same disco as Bravo reportedly told police Tuesday that "that woman was completely drunk when she took the wheel. She couldn't even turn the ignition on"," reported the Gazzettino newspaper. Bravo drove off in a direction that was diametrically opposite the Aviano base, the witness said.
    Bravo on Tuesday said "I'm destroyed by sorrow, I apologize for the pain I have caused." She exercised her right to remain silent when questioned about the incident, however. Bravo had asked only to make a spontaneous statement to apologize to Zanier's parents and his brother. She was remanded in custody, under house arrest at the Aviano base, with charges of vehicular homicide upheld.
    As well as the Cermis disaster, Italo-US relations were also strained by the accidental killing in Iraq by a US soldier of intelligence officer Nicola Calipari in an incident at a checkpoint along the Baghdad airport road on March 4, 2005. He was the only soldier at the checkpoint to open fire and he also injured Calipari's driver and fellow SISMI agent, Andrea Carpani, and journalist Giuliana Sgrena. An unprecedented joint enquiry by US and Italian investigators into the incident failed to reach an agreed conclusion. (ANSA).