Ex-boyfriend accused of setting Rebecca Cheptegei on fire dies from burns

The former boyfriend of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei, who was accused of setting her on fire, has died from burns sustained during the attack.

Cheptegei, 33, died last week after suffering burns to about 80 per cent of her body. Her ex-partner, Dickson Ndiema Marangach, allegedly doused her in gasoline and set her ablaze over a land dispute. She had just recently competed in the marathon at the Paris Olympics.

Marangach succumbed to his own burn injuries on Monday, according to the Kenyan hospital where he was being treated. About 30 per cent of his body suffered burns after some of the gasoline used in the attack splashed on him and he was also set on fire, local media reported.

“He developed respiratory failure as a result of the severe airway burns and sepsis that led to his eventual death on Monday evening at 18:30 hours despite life-saving measures,” a press release from Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital said, according to the BBC.

The attack happened on Sept. 1 in western Trans Nzoia County, where Cheptegei lived near the Kenya-Uganda border. Cheptegei competed for Uganda in the Olympics but she lived in Kenya. Her parents said the long-distance runner bought land in Trans Nzoia to be near the county’s many athletic training centres.

Marangach allegedly ambushed his former girlfriend in her house after she returned home from church with her children, BBC News reports. It’s believed he snuck into Cheptegei’s home with a five-litre jerry can of gasoline after the couple had a falling out over the Trans Nzoia property.

Marangach was the main suspect in Cheptegei’s murder inquiry, but now that he too has died, the criminal case has been dropped and authorities will lead an inquest into the two deaths instead.

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.

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“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, co-founder 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 told Reuters.

Cheptoo co-founded 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.

Nearly 34 per cent of Kenyan girls and women aged 15-49 years have suffered physical violence, according to government data from 2022, with married women at particular risk. The 2022 survey found that 41 per cent of married women had faced violence.

Globally, a woman is killed by someone in her own family every 11 minutes, according to a 2023 U.N. Women study.

— With files from Reuters