By David Lohr
(Continued)
Yesterday, Sollecito's father, Franco Sollecito, told Dailymail.co.uk: "I have complete faith that my son had nothing to do with this."
According to published reports, Patrick Diya Lumumba is a Congolese man who arrived in Italy in 1988. Like Sollecito, he comes from a well-to-do family — his mother owns a newspaper and his grandfather was Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected president of Congo, who was assassinated in 1961.
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| Patrick Lumamba |
Three years ago, Patrick Diya Lumumba met a young Polish student named Ola. The couple subsequently married and had their first child together last year. In August of this year, Lumumba opened a bar and restaurant called Le Chic in the city's town center. The following month, Lumumba hired Knox to work at the bar.
The day before his arrest, Lumumba was seen handing out flyers publicizing a candlelit vigil for Meredith Kercher. When approached by a reporter from Thisislondon.co.uk, he described Meredith as a "really nice girl."
"When she came into my bar the first time, she asked me for a vodka," he said. "We immediately became friends, and she was going to do PR at my venue; she was going to hand out flyers. She would have been ideal, as she knew so many people and had so many friends. She made friends really easily."
During an interview with Dailymail.co.uk, Esteban Garcia Pascual, owner of a local student bar, said he was both shocked and saddened by news of Lumumba's arrest.
"This is like a hammer blow to the head," Pascual said. "I've known him since 1999, and I can't believe it. He worked at the university organizing cultural events and concerts, and is from a really respectable family. He is a nice person... I've never heard of him having a fight or argument the whole time I have known him."
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