(ANSA) - Lecce, September 14 - The 17-year-old who has confessed to killing his girlfriend, 16-year-old Noemi Durini, told investigators he stabbed her to death, sources said Thursday. There had been reports that the girl had been killed by one or more blows to the head with a rock in a case that has shocked the nation. The boy told investigators that he killed the girl "because she was pushing for all of my family to be killed," sources said.

He said a knife that Noemi had with her was the murder weapon. He also said that he had intended to flee to Milan. Police struggled to save the boy from a lynching when he left a station at the southern town of Specchia overnight following questioning. The crowd began especially angry when he lifted his hand as if to wave at them.

Justice Minister Andrea Orlando and the Italian judiciary's self-governing body, the CSM, have opened procedures into the fact that a 17-year-old had been reported to prosecutors for minors in Lecce over his violent conduct, sources said Thursday.

The report was filed by the mother of Noemi's mother, Imma Rizzo.

