Murdered 9-year-old Melina Frattolin pleaded not to take a trip with her dad just months before he allegedly murdered her on a vacation near Lake George, the girl’s grieving mother testified Tuesday.

Kali Galanis revealed that her ex, Luciano Frattolin, wanted to take Melina to his native Ethiopia for two weeks in January 2025, but their daughter protested, “she didn’t want to go,” Kali said from the stand.

Kali said that she had become uncomfortable with Frattolin’s overseas plans with Melisa.

She said she had concerns about her traveling with Frattolin after their 2019 breakup because her lawyer cited cases of estranged spouses taking children overseas and refusing to return with them.

Early last year, when Galanis was scheduling Melina for summer camp, she reached out to Frattolin to coordinate. He said he wanted to take the girl back to Ethiopia, but something didn’t sit right with her about the suggestion.

“He had changed the dates and was now suggesting a longer trip,” she said in court, citing “troubling and alarming things” Melina told her that her father had said about her unwillingness to return to the east African nation that led her to ultimately cancel the trip.

“I became uncomfortable,” Galanis said.

“I was not ok with that anymore,” she said of the Ethiopia trip.

Luciano, 46, the Ethiopian-born founder of a Montreal-based company called Gambella Coffee suggested via email the pair instead travel to New York for their 2025 trip.

They wound up traveling across Connecticut and New York until the day she was supposed to return to the family home in Quebec, at which point authorities said he filed a bogus kidnapping report about the girl – barely an hour after she called her mother ahead of their flight back.

Luciano told authorities she had been snatched by two men in a white van, sparking an Amber Alert.

Her lifeless body was discovered a few hours later – authorities saying there was no evidence she had been kidnapped.

Essex County Court, where Luciano is standing trial for her murder, heard Monday that he chillingly told an investigator grilling him over her alleged disappearance it “would’ve been easier” to murder the young girl overseas, either in Italy or his native Ethiopia.

New York State Police investigator Daniel Mauro said the startling admission came after he asked Luciano if he had any reason to kill his own daughter.