The former partner of Ugandan athlete Rebecca Cheptegei, who is accused of killing her by dousing her in gasoline and setting her on fire, has died from burns sustained during the attack, the Kenyan hospital where he was being treated said yesterday.
Cheptegei, 33, who competed in the marathon at the Paris Olympics, sustained burns to more than 75 percent of her body in the Sept. 1 attack and died four days later.
Her former boyfriend, Dickson Ndiema Marangach, died at 7:50pm on Monday, said Daniel Lang’at, a spokesman at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret in western Kenya, where Cheptegei was also treated and died.
Photo: Reuters
“He died from his injuries, the burns he sustained,” Lang’at said.
Local media reported that he had sustained 30 percent burns when he assaulted Cheptegei as she was returning home from church with her children.
Cheptegei, who finished 44th in Paris, is the third elite sportswoman to be killed in Kenya since October 2021. Her death has put the spotlight on domestic violence in the East African country, particularly within its running community.
Rights groups say female athletes in Kenya, where many international runners train in the high-altitude highlands, are at a high risk of exploitation and violence at the hands of men drawn to their prize money, which far exceeds local incomes.
“Justice really would have been for him to sit in jail and think about what he had done. This is not positive news whatsoever,” said Viola Cheptoo, cofounder of Tirop’s Angels, a support group for survivors of domestic violence in Kenya’s athletic community.
“The shock of Rebecca’s death is still fresh,” Cheptoo said.
She cofounded Tirop’s Angels in memory of Agnes Tirop, a rising star in Kenya’s highly competitive athletics scene, who was found dead in her home in the town of Iten in October 2021, with multiple stab wounds to the neck.
Ibrahim Rotich, Tirop’s husband, was charged with her murder and has pleaded not guilty. The case is ongoing.
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