No parking

Parking in most big cities is a real bitch. That said, I don't think this is really an appropriate response to a parking dispute. Unless you're a magician.

A street parking attendant in Brazil's crime-ridden city of Rio de Janeiro was charged with sawing a woman in two over a parking space dispute, police said on Wednesday.

The 29-year-old male suspect was arrested on Tuesday night and confessed to murdering businesswoman Edna Souza, 51, in a house she was trying to rent in the middle class Botafogo district, a police spokeswoman said.

"Only the bottom part of the corpse has been found. Today police are going in force to the city waste dump, which will be combed to try to find the upper part," the spokeswoman said.

Well, now, doesn't that sound like fun?

The parking attendant told police he had had an argument with Souza some time ago when she left her car in front of a building where parking was banned, ignoring his protests. The last time she came to the neighbourhood on Monday he followed her inside the house and killed her.

Police received information that the two had quarrelled and questioned the man, who confessed the murder. He killed her with a knife and then used a handsaw to dismember the body, police said. The man said Souza had humiliated him.

One can only wonder what depraved depths of violence he would've sunk to had she, say, parked in front of a fire hydrant.