LONDON — British police confronted a man trying to eat the eyeball and face of a woman and used a stun gun on the cannibal, who later died, local media quoted witnesses as saying.

The woman was pronounced dead at the scene and a murder investigation has been opened.

Police said they were called to a hostel in the village of Argoed in South Wales on Thursday after reports of a man attacking a woman.

Security staff at the Sirhowy Arms discovered the 34-year-old man, who had been released from prison two weeks ago, eating the woman, a 22-year-old believed to be his girlfriend, according to witnesses quoted by the South Wales Evening Post.

Police shot the man with a Taser. He became unresponsive and died, despite attempts by paramedics to save him, police said.

Many details of the incident were not immediately clear.

“This animal was eating this girl to death,” the South Wales Evening Post quoted Jill Edwards, who lives near the hostel, as saying.

The attack drew comparisons with Hannibal Lecter, a fictional murderer who ate his victims.

“He went Hannibal Lecter on the woman, he gouged her eyeball out, ate them and ate half her face,” the South Wales Evening Post quoted Lyn Beasley as saying.

A spokesman for Welsh police declined to supply further details of the attack, citing the murder investigation. Argoed, a former coal-mining village, is about 160 miles (260 kilometers) west of London.