English man with knife stopped at Colosseum

ROME- A man has been stopped at the Colosseum for attempting entry with a large steel dive knife used for scuba diving on his person, local police have reported.

Like at many famous monuments, the 33-year-old man had to pass through a metal detector, which signalled the metal knife and alerted local officers who immediately searched him and found the weapon on him. The knife has now been confiscated. 

The man in question is English and lives in the United States. The man, who is visiting Rome as a tourist with his girlfriend, told officers that the knife was a present. This reason, however, does not serve as a valid justification to avoid a police charge of illegal possession of a cold weapon, one that doesn’t involve fire or explosions.  

The man is under the authority of the Judicial Authority. An investigation is underway to try to understand whether there was a motive for the attempted entry into the Colosseum with a knife or whether it was an act of sheer forgetfulness.  

On June 20 2017, a man was stopped inside the Flavio amphitheatre, close to the Colosseum, for attempted to enter the monument with a belt of 64 bullets around his waist. It was then found that the bullets carried by the 22-year-old Italian-Belgian were empty and therefore harmless and was instead believed that the belt was just a part of his ‘heavy metal’ look. 

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