In a joint effort, police in Tbong Khmum and Mondulkiri provinces arrested one of three men who allegedly decapitated a man with whom they had a dispute in front of his young daughter.

Sao Saroeun, a 37-year-old farmer, got into a feud with a neighbour earlier that day when he broke a plate and threw rice in his house while all four men were drinking, said Loeung Rotha, police chief of Tbong Khmum’s O’reang-ou district, where the murder occurred.

That night, he was attacked by three men bearing scythes as he walked his 9-year-old daughter to her grandmother’s house, Rotha said. “It is terrible and has never happened before in this region,” Rotha said. “It is a spite-driven case ... revenge.”