(ANSA) - ROME, AUG 23 - A United States aircraftswoman who knocked over and killed a 15-year-old boy in northern Italy at the weekend must be tried in Italy and not the US, the boy's mother said Tuesday.
    The 20-year-old USAF solider was based at the Aviano air force base near Pordenone.
    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 Calpiari.
    "That woman must be tried in Italy and serve her full term," said Barbara Scandella, mother of Giovanni Zanier, the victim of the incident near Pordenone early on Sunday morning.
    The aircraftswoman, 20-year-old Julia Bravo, was found to have a blood alcohol level four times the legal limit in Italy.
    She faces a hearing to uphold her arrest warrant later Tuesday.
    The woman, who was driving back from a night out, reportedly lost control of her car after a roundabout and hit Giovanni 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 Roberto 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.
    The American members cleared the checkpoint soldiers of all responsibility and refused to hand Lozano over for trial, while the Italians blamed the US's organisation of the checkpoint.
    Calipari, a former policeman who rescued several Mafia kidnap victims before joining intelligence agency SISMI two years before his death, has become a national hero in Italy.
    Over the Mt Cermis incident, Italy's supreme Court of Cassation ruled in August 2000 that the Italian courts have no jurisdiction in the civil suit filed against the US for its role in the disaster two years previously.
    Twenty died on February 3, 1998 when a US Marine Corps plane sliced through a mountain cableway in the Dolomites near Trento, sending a gondola plunging to the ground and killing on those board - all foreign skiers except for the Italian operator.
    The families of the Mount Cermis victims were awarded the maximum indemnity by the Italian government, 3.8 billion lire each for a total of 76 billion lire ($38 million). Under Nato agreements, the US government had to pay 75% of the total.
    A US military court acquitted the pilot and co-pilot of responsibility, only sentencing them on minor charges.
    An Italian parliamentary commission of inquiry into the case concluded in February 2001 that the pilots had committed ''aggravated manslaughter''.
    The head of the commission, Ermanno Iacobellis, said that at the time of the tragedy, in February 1988, ''Italy and the people of the Trentino region lived through a moment of subjection to higher needs of Nato training.'' The panel spoke of ''a tragedy foretold'' because of previous low-flying flights in the area.
    The report was highly critical of the US military court which acquitted the pilots, Capt. Richard Ashby and Capt. Joseph Schweitzer, giving them only a dishonourable discharge because they had tampered with evidence of the flight.
    But it also pointed the finger at the Nato chain of command in Italy which had in fact allowed low-level flights to become routine. (ANSA).