Yara Nardi/F3 Press

Reid Schepis is taken into custody Thursday after he was alleged to have stabbed fellow student Fabio Malpeso.

Updated at 4:15 a.m. ET on Nov. 5: ROME -- A 19-year-old American was in critical condition Friday after he was allegedly stabbed while he slept by a fellow student following a night of partying in the Italian capital, officials told NBC News.

The victim, New Jersey-born Fabio Malpeso underwent surgery for stab wounds to his lungs and other parts of his body. Police said Friday that Malpeso was in critical but stable condition in intensive care at a hospital in Rome. 

Authorities said the motive for the attack, which happened in an apartment that overlooks Rome's famous Colosseum early Thursday morning, was unclear. However, detectives suspect "drug- and alcohol-related delirium" might be a factor.

The alleged assailant, who was taken to a police station and then a prison in central Rome, was named as Reid Alexander Schepis, 20. The suspect and victim are both students at John Cabot University, an American college in Rome.

Police said Schepis, a resident of Reggio Calabria in southern Italy, appeared to have joint U.S. and Italian citizenship, but they were working to establish his nationalities.

Lawyer: Suspect a 'model student'
Schepis' lawyer, Vincenzo Comi, said his client was "distraught and exhausted," after visiting the young man in jail Friday.

"He is clearly under shock, and nothing in his past could have prepared him for this. He has never had any problems with the law and has always been a model student with top grades,” Comi said, adding he did not want to say what Schepis had told him at this stage.

Comi said Schepis’ mother was American and his father Italian, and as far as he was aware Schepis had dual citizenship.

A third man, an Italian aged in his 30s named Andrea Rinaldi, suffered injuries to his arms and hands trying to defend Malpeso, and was also in the hospital, police said.

Paolo Guiso, a judiciary police inspector who is leading the investigation, told NBC News Friday that Schepis and Malpeso had returned to the apartment, where Malpeso's sister Federica and Rinaldi were also staying, after partying in a nightclub Wednesday night and early Thursday.

Yara Nardi / F3 Press

The building where Schepis is alleged to have stabbed Malpeso is not far from the Coliseum in central Rome.

More international coverage from NBC News

"Federica, Rinaldi and Fabio went to bed at 6 a.m. [Thursday]. Reid stayed in the living room. At a certain point, he went to the kitchen, fetched a knife and went into Fabio's room, where he started to stab the sleeping youth," Guiso alleged. 

"Hearing the screaming and commotion, Rinaldi and the victim's sister ran in to see what was happening. They stepped in to defend Fabio, which resulted in Rinaldi suffering cuts to his hands and arms," he said.

"The motive of the attack is still not clear. At present we … believe that the violence was brought on due to a drug- and alcohol-related delirium," Guiso added.

'Best friends'
Guiso said early Friday that he had not been able to speak properly with Schepis as he was "still half asleep and at times catatonic ...  he was almost in a state of unconsciousness at times."

"We have taken him to Regina Coeli prison in the heart of Rome. Within 48 hours from the arrest, he will have to go before the judge who will need to confirm his arrest," he added.

Marta Canigiulia, 20, a student at John Cabot, told NBC News Friday that she was friends with Schepis and Malpeso, though she had only recently met the latter.

“They were best friends ... they are best friends, I hope they still are,” she added. “I loved them for the fact that they were always very cheery. They would always come up to you and say: ‘Hi Marta, what’s up?’ They were always smiling.”

More US coverage from NBCNews.com

Referring to Schepis, Canigiulia said with tears in her eyes, “he is a good person.”

“I can’t explain why this happened. Probably it’s because of drugs,” she speculated.

Geraldine Gully, 18, another student, said she did not know Schepis and Malpeso personally but “saw them all the time at school. ... They seemed like very good friends. I was so shocked to hear what had happened because it was so unexpected and you wouldn’t believe it,” she said.

In a statement, John Cabot University President France Pavoncello said he was dealing “with this situation personally” with support from other staff and was in touch with the “involved parties and their families.”

He confirmed the suspect and victim were students at the university, saying they were roommates in an off-campus apartment. 

“I trust you will all join me in sending our prayers to the victim's family for their son's full recovery as well as to the family of the alleged attacker, who is likely shattered by this tragic event,” he added.

Thursday was the fifth anniversary of the brutal murder of British student Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy, that led to the arrest, trial and eventual acquittal of American student Amanda Knox.

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MILAN - Italian prosecutors asked the country's highest criminal court on Tuesday to reinstate the murder convictions of American Amanda Knox and her former boyfriend in the brutal slaying of a British student.

Knox, through her attoney, called the prosecutors' request "harassment."

Perugia prosecutors filed the 112-page appeal, more than four months after an appeals court threw out the convictions against Knox, 24, and Raffaele Sollecito, 27.

Prosecutors Giovanni Galati said he is "very convinced" that Sollecito and Knox are responsible for the Nov. 1, 2007, stabbing death of Meredith Kercher, a 21-year-old British student who shared an apartment with Knox in the university town of Perugia.

Galati told reporters in Pergugia that the appeals sentence must be thrown out, saying it was full of "ommissions and many errors," the news agency ANSA reported.

The prosecutors appeal, which was expected, marks the third and final stage in the criminal case against Knox and Sollecito.

The two were found guilty in a lower court of slaying Kercher in what prosecutors described as a sex-fueled attack, and sentenced to 26 years and 25 years respectively. An appeals court then said the evidence did not hold up, freeing Knox to return home to the United States after serving four years in prison. Sollecito lives in Italy.

Luca Maori, Sollecito's lawyer, said the high court is expected to issue its decision toward the end of the year.

The prosecutors move was expected, and Maori said he would file his counter-arguments after going over the prosecutors' appeal.

"We will write our brief to say it's a mistake," Maori said.

Amanda Knox's family, in a statement obtained by NBC News, said the appeal was not unexpected.

"We are not concerned about this appeal, as Amanda’s innocence was clearly and convincingly proven in her appeal trial," said the statement, issued by attorney Theodore Simon. "This is simply another example of harassment by the prosecutor against Amanda and makes this terrible, painful incident continue to go on for Amanda, Raffaele and their families."

Amanda Knox 'loves Italy' and might return

Fatal blow?
The high court cannot hear new evidence, and will make its decision based on what has been submitted in earlier trials.

The fatal blow to the prosecution's case was a court-ordered DNA review in the appellate trial that discredited crucial genetic evidence used to convict Knox and Sollecito in 2009.

Kercher was found slain in a pool of blood in the house she shared with Knox in Perugia. The appeals court in October said the guilty verdicts against the pair were not corroborated by any evidence, and that the court hadn't proven they were in the house when Kercher was killed.

Still, the appellate panel stopped short of saying what might have happened the night of the murder.

A third defendant, Ivory Coast-born drifter Rudy Guede, was convicted in a separate trial of sexually assaulting and stabbing Kercher. His 16-year sentence, reduced in appeal from an initial 30 years, was upheld by Italy's highest court in 2010.

Last week, Knox's Italian lawyer has filed an appeal of her slander conviction. Although she was cleared of the murder conviction, the Italian appeals court had upheld her conviction for slander — for falsely accusing bar owner Diya "Patrick" Lumumba of involvement in the slaying.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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 A Connecticut mother and daughter aboard the cruise ship that grounded off the coast of Italy described a scene of chaos as passengers fended for themselves to climb aboard lifeboats.

Costa Condordia passengers Maria Papa and her daughter, Melissa Goduti, blame the ship's captain, not the crew, for confusion.

"The crew members were running around like the actual passengers," Maria Papa told Ann Curry live on TODAY Tuesday. "They couldn't answer any questions to anyone; there wasn't anybody speaking English...there was so much chaos."

Survivors told harrowing stories of escape from the capsized ship, which struck a reef off the coast of the Tuscan island of Giglio on Friday with more than 4,200 passengers aboard, including more than 100 Americans. Authorities on Tuesday accused Capt. Francesco Schettino of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning his ship before all passengers were evacuated.

Official to fleeing captain: 'You go aboard. It is an order'

The death toll rose to 11 on Tuesday when divers extracted five more bodies, all of them adults wearing life jackets, from the rear of the ship near an emergency evacuation point. Another two dozen people remained unaccounted for. 

"I think if the captain took more of a hand on it, then I think the crew would have been better able to understand what was going on," Papa told Curry.

Papa and Goduti managed to flee the ship -- an especially nerve-wracking experience for Papa because she doesn't know how to swim. "We went to get on one boat when they had finally sounded the alarm, and the door would not open on that lifeboat," she told Curry. "Someone grabbed my hand and we went to the next boat."

Read the rest of the story on TODAY.com

'Lurching feeling'
Others told similar stories of confusion and panic as they returned home over the weekend to reunite with family and friends.

 “It is surreal,” Alex Beach, 65, told the Albuquerque Journal. “I’m sitting here looking back on it, and I can’t believe it.”

Alex and her husband Arthur had just eaten dinner and were back in their cabin, reading and watching TV, when they heard a loud screeching sound and a "lurching feeling," recalled Arthur Beach.

"We've hit something," he told his wife, as items began flying around their 10th-deck cabin and the lights went out.

The couple opened their door, to let light in from the hallway. Meanwhile, an announcement came over the ship's loudspeakers in five languages, telling the passngers that there was a minor electrical problem and not to worry.

Slideshow: Luxury cruise ship runs aground

Andreas Solaro / AFP - Getty Images

The Costa Concordia ran aground Jan. 13 off the coast of Italy, resulting in the evacuation of thousands of passengers as the ship began heavily listing.

Launch slideshow

Except, as the Beaches recalled to the Albuquerque Journal, passengers were already beginning to panic. “People were screaming and crying, some of them with their life vests on, saying, ‘We’re leaving, we’re leaving,’” Alex Beach told the Journal.

Read the full story on the Alburqerque Journal

'Windows underwater'
Another passenger, Blake Miller of Austin, talked Monday with NBC's Lester Holt.  "I honestly did not have a true understanding of, of, how bad it was until we were on the life boat and looked back and saw the first row of windows under water and people screaming that couldn't get on a life boat, still on the boat. And that's when we realized how much it was really tilting."

Steve Garcia, also of Austin, credited other passengers for assisting with the evacuation amid the confusion, according to a story by nbcdfw.com.

"The only thing that worked for us was the passengers," he said. It's amazing that none of us spoke the same language, but we knew how to take care of each other, but the crew couldn't figure that out."

Read the full story on nbcdfw.com

Honeymoon cruise trouble
Newlyweds Robert and Megan Mauri of Philadelphia had gone on the cruise to celebrate their honeymoon. They recalled how the ship's tilt made many of the life rafts useless. As helicopters rescued some people, others jumped overboard and swam.

"We knew we were in trouble when we were on the second deck and the toilet water was starting to ... the ship was titling so bad that the toilet water was flowing out, into the hallway" Robert Mauri told nbcphiladelphia.com.

"The crew didn't seem like they knew what they were doing," he said.

Read the full story on nbcphiladelphia.com

Lack of leadership
Georgia Ananias, one of four people from her family aboard the cruise ship, told TODAY that passengers were left to fend for themselves.

"There was no direction. There were no officers available," said Ananias, who is from Los Angeles. "Everybody was one man for themselves. People did not know how to do anything."

Her husband, Dean Ananias, described the moments after the ship turned on its side.

"We were actually walking on the outside walls on top of the ship," he told TODAY. "We walked along where the windows were and eventually, with help from some others, we had to crawl along."

They used ropes dangling outside the ship to lower themselves to safety, Dean Ananias said. The family said about five hours passed from the time they sensed something was wrong to the time they reached safety.

"Five hours of struggling while this ship is sinking, trying to go against gravity trying to pull ourselves up," said Georgia Ananias. "Trying to get away from breaking glass, bodies flying."

Read more of Ananias' story on nbclosangeles.com 

Like the 'Titanic'
The experience aboard the sinking Costa Concordia was so terrifyling that Arlene Sanchez said her mother, Connie Barron, never plans to travel again.

 "She told me it was indescribable, and she is never going to travel again in her life," she told nbcmiami.com. "She will never take a cruise. It was terrible. It was like the Titanic.”

Read the rest of the story on nbcmiami.com

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NBC News

Amanda Knox makes a short statement at Sea-Tac Airport.

By msnbc.com's Kari Huus and Alex Johnson

Update 9 p.m. ET: As Amanda Knox and her family leave and the ladders are folded, supporters urge the media crowd to "give them some peace. ... Give them some time." 

_____

Update 8:51 p.m. ET: Amanda Knox's statement at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport: 

They're reminding me to speak in English, because I'm having problems with that. 

I'm really overwhelmed right now. I was looking down from the airplane, and it seemed everything wasn't real. 

What's important for me to say is just thank you to everyone who's believed in me, who's defended me and who's supported my family.

My family is the most important thing to me right now, and I just want to go be with them. So, thank you for being there for me.

_____

Update 8:41 p.m. ET: The news conference is over. Amanda Knox spoke briefly, saying, "I'm really overwhelmed right now."

She arrived in the briefing room to loud whoops from a crowd of supporters. She was crying, with her hand over her mouth.

• Full coverage of the Amanda Knox case on msnbc.com

She then sat with her family, still crying and clutching a relative's hand.

_____

Kari Huus / msnbc.com

A supporter of Amanda Knox at the Seattle airport Tuesday evening.

Update 8:32p.m. ET: Amanda Knox and her family have arrived for a news conference at the Seattle airport. A groan went up from journalists when it was announced that no questions would be taken.

_____

Update 8:16 p.m. ET: The first Italian press to show up were Manuela Moreno, an anchor for Rai TV in Italy, and a producer who arrived with a producer this morning from New York, where they had been for the previous month. 

For these veterans of the Amanda Knox drama — they've been covering it since the news of the murder — there's no surprise that even in relatively far-flung Seattle, press hunger for the story remains at a fever pitch. 

"I expected it, yes, because Amanda is young, beautiful and enigmatic. There are three young people, love, sex and a horrible murder in a small town. ... It has all the ingredients for a horrible story," said Moreno.

None of the same frenzy surrounds Knox's former boyfriend, Italian Raffaele Sollecito, whose conviction was also overturned. Moreno says she thinks this is because he is more "naive."  

"But she is like a sphinx," Moreno says of Knox. "No one knows what she thinks."  

Moreno sees no end to press interest in Italy for a long time, especially if she delays talking to Italian press.  

"It all depends on how long Amanda drags is out before talking ot the press. The sooner she does, the sooner she will get rid of us."

They hope to understand her better by seeing how she acts now that she is back in the United States. But if she is very elusive, they might end up camped in front of her house in West Seattle. 

"It could get quite obnoxious," says Morena.

— Kari Huus

_____

Update 8:09 p.m. ET: Amanda Knox's plane has landed safely at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

_____

Update 7:40 p.m. ET: While there was a sense of relief and joy among supporters of Amanda Knox, she and her family face a host of challenges, NBC's Stephanie Gosk reports. The family has been nearly bankrupted by legal fees, and her grandmother says she's drowning in debt:

_____

Update 7:25 p.m. ET: While news crews make up most of the crowd at Sea-Tac airport waiting for Amanda Knox, a couple of civilians did make their way to the press area.

Kari Huus / msnbc.com

News crews jam Seattle-Tacoma International Airport ahead of Amanda Knox's arrival.

"I wondered why there weren't more people here," Rochelle Fitzgerald — who landed in Seattle on her way back to Port Angeles, Wash., from Los Angeles — said upon learning that Knox wasn't expected to land until after 5 p.m. local time (8 p.m. ET).

Fitzgerald just happened by coincidence to be in the airport as the press was setting up and she was hoping to catch a glimpse of Knox, who she said got a raw deal.

"All I can say is it's a shame when our American people go into another country, and the things that happen," she said. "I think it's a sad situation to go through that, and [Knox] needs all the support she can get."

• Full details and background on the Amanda Knox case

By contrast, Thomas Bakker of Seattle has been following the case from day one, and with a day off work, he took Seattle's light rail to Sea-Tac expressly for Knox's homecoming.

In Bakker's opinion, "after all is said and done, she was in the wrong place at the wrong time." 

"She kept mixing up her story at the beginning," he said, "and so that probably triggered the prosecution, who was able to go after her." 

— Kari Huus

____

Update 6:32 p.m. ET: Anne Bremner, a Seattle defense attorney who served as a spokeswoman for Friends of Amanda Knox, which raised money for her defense, tells Reuters that Knox is likely to make a brief statement thanking her supporters. 

NBC station KING-TV of Seattle reported that Friends of Amanda Knox would not be at the airport but would instead wait for Knox to decide when and where they would hold a celebration.
_____

Original post: Nearly a dozen TV satellite trucks are sitting outside the Seattle airport, part of a media maelstrom awaiting Amanda Knox's return home after she served four years in an Italian prison for a murder she was ultimately found not to have committed.

Knox's British Airways flight was on schedule for an estimated arrival at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport about 8:12 p.m. ET. When she lands, customs agents will meet her and her family, and then they will be whisked through a secure door for a news conference, said Perry Cooper, a spokesman for the Port of Seattle, which operates Sea-Tac.

Knox's parents and the family's legal adviser are expected to speak, but it isn't known whether Knox, 24, an exchange student at the University of Washington, herself plans to make any statement. They'll then be whisked away to depart privately.

Msnbc.com will stream the news conference live, probably beginning around 9 p.m. ET.

Knox was initially sentenced to 26 years in prison after she and her then-boyfriend were convicted in 2009 of sexually assaulting and killing her British roommate, Meredith Kercher, in 2007. An Italian appeals court overturned the convictions Monday, setting off a media frenzy in Italy and the U.S. alike. The prosecutor said he would appeal the ruling, and Kercher's family was left without a resolution to her killing. 

Knox's case generated enormous interest and sympathy in the U.S., but NBC News' Claudio Lavanga reported from Perugia that as soon as the verdict became clear Monday, the air filled with  cries of "Shame, Shame." The Knox family, pelted with heady insults when they emerged from the court, had to be whisked away by security.

• Full details and background on the Amanda Knox case

Carlo Dalla Vedova, one of Knox's Italian attorneys, said Knox is weak, stressed and scared after her ordeal.

"She hasn't got so much sleep, and this week has been extremely heavy on her," Dalla Vedova said in an interview with NBC's TODAY: