South African police arrested a man they found using a knife and fork to eat the heart of his ex-girlfriend's new lover, police media reported on Thursday.
The jealous lover had stabbed the 62-year-old victim in his chest and neck, leaving a bite mark on his face, the police told the BBC News.
Police were called to the gruesome scene at a house in Cape Town's Gugulethu township by frantic neighbors, spokesman Frederick van Wyk told the Cape Times.
"On the scene they found a suspect, a Zimbabwean national, busy eating the heart of a human with a knife and fork," he said.
The woman at the center of the love triangle told police that her former lover had visited the house where she was living with her current partner and they had chatted together before he gave her money to buy liquor and she left.
She found her partner, Mbuyiselo Manona, had been stabbed after she returned home, Van Wyk said.
Alerted by the nearby commotion, neighbors were shocked to peer through the house windows and witness the man cutting out Manona's heart and eating it, Agence France-Presse reported.
"The whole situation was crazy. We were shouting at him to stop, but he did not listen," one neighbor said.
"Even when the police got here... the guys were scared to go in. They had to call for back-up."
"You can't really blame them -- how do you go into a room with someone dripping another person's blood out of his mouth?"
The suspect was arrested and is due to be formally charged in court soon.
Western Cape deputy police commissioner Sharon Jephta said the motive for the murder was "definitely a love triangle".
Police officers and witnesses had been offered counseling to cope with the trauma, Jephta said.
"It was very gruesome," she said.
