Ugandan Olympic runner Rebecca Cheptegei dies after man set her on fire, police say
Man said to be runner's boyfriend accused in attack that burned more than 75% of her body
WARNING: This story contains details of gender-based violence and murder.
A Ugandan Olympic athlete living in Kenya has died from her injuries after being set on fire by a man believed to be her boyfriend, the head of the country's Olympics committee said on Thursday.
"May her gentle soul rest in peace and we strongly condemn violence against women. This was a cowardly and senseless act that has led to the loss of a great athlete. Her legacy will continue to endure," Donald Rukare, president of Uganda Olympics Committee, said in a post on X.
Kenyan police and medical officials had previously said Rebecca Cheptegei suffered burns on 75 per cent of her body in an attack on Sunday at her house in the town of Endebess in western Trans Nzoia County, situated along the Kenya-Uganda border.
Trans Nzoia County Police Commander Jeremiah ole Kosiom said Monday that Dickson Ndiema Marangach — the Kenyan man reported to be Cheptegei's boyfriend — bought a jerrycan of gas, poured it on her and set her ablaze following a disagreement.
Kenya's The Nation reported that 33-year-old Cheptegei had been at church with her two children Sunday afternoon before the attack happened and that, according to a report filed by a local chief, Marangach snuck into her home while she was out.
The local chief's report stated before the fire started, the pair was heard fighting over the land on which the house was built.
Marangach also sustained burn wounds to 30 per cent of his body, according to Kenya's The Star.
Both had been taken to the intensive care unit at the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in the city of Eldoret, 90 kilometres south of the town where the attack happened. Kenyan government sports official Peter Tum said Wednesday there had also been plans to airlift Cheptegei to capital city Nairobi for treatment.
Cheptegei's parents said their daughter bought land in Trans Nzoia to be near the country's many athletic training centres. Her family, speaking to reporters outside the hospital on Tuesday, disputed the claim that Marangach was her boyfriend, saying they were friends who had previously stayed together when she trained in Kenya.
Cheptegei finished 44th in the women's marathon at the 2024 Paris Olympics last month. She also held the Ugandan women's marathon record of 2:22:47, which she set during the Abu Dhabi Marathon in December 2022.
Runners lost to gender-based violence
The United Nations strongly condemned Cheptegei's death.
UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric recalled the words of Secretary-General António Guterres, who said, "We still live in a male-dominated culture that leaves women vulnerable by denying them equality in dignity and rights."
According to UN figures, a woman or girl is killed by an intimate partner or family member somewhere in the world every 11 minutes.
Dujarric said that "the true numbers are much higher."
The fatal attack on Cheptegei is the latest violent assault against a noted female runner in Kenya in a short span of time.
Kenyan long distance runner Agnes Jebet Tirop was killed in October 2021, just months after she competed in the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo and finished fourth in the women's 5,000-metre final. She was also a two-time, 10,000-metre bronze medallist at the World Athletics Championships.
The 25-year-old was found stabbed to death in her home, in the high-altitude western Kenyan town of Iten, a hub for distance running training centres.
Police arrested her husband, Ibrahim Rotich, in the coastal city of Mombasa following a manhunt. Authorities allege he was trying to flee the country.
He later pleaded not guilty to her murder. He was released on bail in November 2023.
Her death sparked an outcry and led to the formation of a group called Tirop's Angels, which seeks to educate about and eradicate gender-based violence.
In April 2022, Kenyan-born Bahraini athlete Damaris Muthee Mutua was found dead near the town of Iten, at the home of Ethiopian runner Koki Foi, who was reported to be her boyfriend.
A postmortem report stated the 28-year-old was strangled. Police believe Foi fled the country.
Their deaths are a part of what some activists have described as a silent epidemic of gender-based violence in Kenya.
Kenya's Demographic and Health Survey of 2023 found that more than 11 million women — or 20 per cent of the population — have experienced physical or sexual violence from an intimate partner during their lives, with 2.8 million of those women having experienced this type of violence in the previous 12 months.
Odipo Dev, a Kenyan research firm, says at least 500 women in Kenya were killed because of their gender from January 2016 to December 2023.
With files from CBC News