Family sues for coed's death in Italy

PERUGIA, Italy, Oct. 20 (UPI) -- Lawyers for the family of slain British student Meredith Kercher on Monday asked for more than $33 million in damages from her alleged attackers in Italy.

The family requested more than $6.6 million in compensation for each of Kercher's parents, two brothers and sister, ANSA reported Monday.

"Meredith Kercher was a young woman with a desire to live, who came to Perugia to study and to meet new people, happy with a life that was, however, taken from her,'' said lawyers Francesca Maresca and Serena Perna.

Kercher, a 22-year-old foreign exchange student, was found semi-naked with her throat cut Nov. 2 at the house she shared in Perugia, Italy, with three other female students.

Prosecutor Giuliano Mignini said Kercher was killed when her American roommate Amanda Knox, Knox's Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito and Ivory Coast national Rudy Guede tried to force her to participate in ''a perverse group sex game.''

Mignini asked judges for a life sentence for Guede, who asked for a fast-track trial so that he would not be tried alongside Knox, 21, and Sollecito, 24, the Italian news service reported.