Knox returns to Seattle

Associated Press

SEATTLE

Amanda Knox returned to her hometown of Seattle on Tuesday and was as overcome with emotion as she was a day earlier in Italy, when she was acquitted on murder charges after four years in prison. “Thank you for being there for me,” she tearfully told her supporters in front of a crowd of international reporters.

“I’m really overwhelmed right now,” she said at a news conference minutes after she was escorted off a British Airways flight out of London. “I was looking down from the airplane, and it seemed like everything wasn’t real.”

Knox’s life turned around dramatically Monday when an Italian appeals court threw out her conviction in the sexual assault and fatal stabbing of her British roommate. On Tuesday, photos of Knox crying in the courtroom after the verdict was read appeared on the front pages of newspapers in Italy, the U.S., Britain and around the world.

Wearing a brown cardigan and black leggings, with her hair in a ponytail, Knox sobbed at the news conference and held her mother’s hand as her lawyer Theodore Simon said her acquittal “unmistakably announced to the world” that she was not responsible for the killing of Meredith Kercher.

After her parents offered their thanks to Knox’s lawyers and supporters, Knox spoke briefly, saying, “Thank you to everyone who’s believed in me, who’s defended me, who’s supported my family,” she said.