Popular S.F. teacher and coach brutally attacked and robbed while visiting Italy

San Francisco Chronicle​

19-07-2025

The thought kept flashing through Nicholas Pellegrino's mind as he sat on a train station outside of Milan, blood pouring from his throat.
If the 29-year-old San Francisco high school teacher and track coach didn't get help soon, he was going to die.
'I had no doubt about that in my mind,' he said. 'It's a feeling of helplessness that I don't wish on my worst enemy.'
Moments before, several passengers had attacked him, slashing his throat with a knife and robbing him.
Pellegrino, who teaches religion at San Francisco's Archbishop Riordan High School, had traveled to Italy this month for vacation. He was looking forward to seeing relatives and friends in northern Italy.
On July 15, he'd caught a train just before noon from just Melegnano, a Milanese suburb, bound for Florence. But the moment he stepped on the train, something felt off.
A few seats down, several passengers kept staring at him — then quickly looking away whenever they saw him looking back. As the train rolled into the next stop, one of them rushed him, swinging a knife.
With blood pouring from his neck, the thieves ripped the crucifix he was wearing and grabbed his backpack and luggage.
Pellegrino clapped a hand to his neck and ran out of the train. He staggered to a column on the platform and sat down, screaming for help. He took his shirt off and pressed it against his throat, trying to staunch the blood pouring out.
'This was going to be the end,' he kept thinking.
Paramedics arrived about 15 minutes later and rushed him to the hospital.
During the assault, Pellegrino's attackers nicked — but didn't fully sever — his jugular artery, doctors later determined. By the time they were able to stop the bleeding and repair the artery, he'd lost more than a liter of blood.
'Even the surgeons are saying it was a miracle,' he told the Chronicle by phone after being discharged from the hospital in San Donato Milanese. 'There's no other way to put it.'
Italian authorities arrested the attack suspects several hours later at a train station about an hour from where Pellegrino was assaulted. Police told him the suspects are four North African men from Tunisia and Morocco who authorities determined were in the country illegally, he said.
Police told Pellegrino they'd already been tracking his assailants — they were believed to have attacked and tried to rob another passenger the same day, and they'd assaulted a cabdriver the night before, slitting his wrist in the attack.
Pellegrino spent four days in hospital, until doctors were sure that his vein was healing correctly and that his blood levels were safe.
Riordan assistant principal Nate Simon called Pellegrino an 'integral part' of the school's community and a beloved teacher and coach.
'We were so sad to hear about what happened, but we've spoken with him and he seems to be doing much better,' he said. 'Our thoughts and prayers are with him as he deals with this terrifying incident.'
Finn McCole was a student of Pellegrino's in New York, before the teacher started working in San Francisco.
Pellegrino was his track coach, he said, and over the years they became good friends, training together and traveling with other students.
McCole recalled trips to Italy, where Pellegrino acted 'almost like a tour guide.'
'He loves Italy,' McCole said. 'He loves the culture, the people. That's why it's so horrifying that he goes there and something like this happens.'
McCole and other students set up a GoFundMe to help with medical expenses and replace his stolen belongings, including his laptop and passport. By Saturday afternoon, the account had raised more than $38,000.
'I'm speechless,' Pellegrino said of the donations from his former students and hundreds of others. 'I would never have expected that outpouring of money/support. I guess it shows that the impact you have being an educator/teacher is more than people might think.'
A deeply religious man, Pellegrino said the experience has only strengthened his faith.
'I'm convinced the hand of God worked a miracle to ensure I did not lose my life that day,' he said.