A 60-year-old woman has been hacked to death by a man wielding an axe while she prayed in a church.

The killing took place in Santa Terezinha de Goias, in west-central Brazil, on the night of Wednesday, 20th April.

Maria Elizabeth Castro de Oliveira was praying alone in a chapel attached to the Santa Terezinha parish church – the main Catholic church in the municipality – when Yuri Ribeiro de Brito, 25, carried out the barbaric attack.

Military Police (Brazil’s preventive police force) colonel Paulo Cesar said: “Witnesses saw him on the pavement and then entering the place.

“Minutes later, they called us saying a woman had been killed.

“There were people in the church, but no one saw the crime because the Santissimo [chapel] is separate from where the masses take place.”

According to police spokesman Douglas Costa, the suspect said he struck the woman on the head because she laughed at him when he went to sit on a pew.

Costa said: “He said he left the river and passed by the church. Upon entering the church, he said the woman would have laughed at him, as if she were making fun of him.”

De Oliveira is believed to have been killed with two blows to the head while she was praying on her knees.

De Brito was arrested at the scene and has since been remanded in preventive custody.

Costa said: “We haven’t ruled out any line of investigation, but on the sanity issue, during questioning, despite showing a lot of coldness, he seemed to be a lucid person.”

The police confiscated the axe and a knife also found in his bag at the scene.

The Military Police had earlier said they believed De Brito chose his victim at random and that the two were unknown to each other.

He has no prior criminal record, according to reports.

The killing is said to have shocked Santa Terezinha de Goias (population 8,562 in 2020), where the victim was well known.