(São Paulo, BRA) - Brazilian former footballer Edmundo Alves de Souza Neto -- better known as Edmundo or "the Animal" -- was arrested on Thursday to serve jail time ordered for a 1995 deadly road accident, police said.
Edmundo was arrested at dawn in a Sao Paulo hotel and was to be taken to Rio de Janeiro to be incarcerated, a police spokesman said.
The footballer's lawyers have said they would appeal the process, according to Globonews television.
Edmundo, a striker who played for Brazil when it finished runner-up behind France in the 1998 World Cup, was found guilty in the deaths of three people in a traffic collision in Rio in December 1995. The 40-year-old more recently had a job as a television sports commentator.
Sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison, he spent only one night behind bars because of legal procedures by his lawyers that were finally exhausted this week.
