Rebecca Cheptegei’s attacker has died from burns sustained when he set fire to the Ugandan marathon runner, who died on Thursday, a hospital in western Kenya where he was being treated told AFP on Tuesday.
Presented by the Kenyan police as the athlete’s companion, Dickson Ndiema Marangach was burned 30% during this fatal attack, which has become an emblematic case of violence against women.
“It is true that we lost Dickson Ndiema yesterday evening around 8:00 p.m.” (Monday 6:00 p.m. GMT), a communications officer at the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital (MTRH) in the town of Eldoret told AFP on Tuesday morning.
On September 1, the man doused Rebecca Cheptegei with petrol and set her ablaze as she was returning from church with her children to her home in Endebess, western Kenya.
The 33-year-old athlete died on Thursday with more than 80% burns. She will be buried on Saturday in her family’s village in eastern Uganda.
According to Rebecca Cheptegei’s father, the attack stemmed from a dispute over the land his daughter had purchased to build her house.
This murder, a few weeks after his participation in the marathon of the Paris Olympic Games (44th), has aroused worldwide emotion and indignation.
The spokesperson for the UN Secretary General, Stéphane Dujarric, notably “firmly” condemned this “violent murder”, “which illustrates a broader problem that is too often ignored”, that of violence against women.
The city of Paris has announced that it will name a sports venue after him.
Her death adds to those of many victims of gender-based violence in Kenya, where the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has recorded 725 women killed in gender-related killings in 2022.
The world of athletics has been mourned three times in three years by this type of murder.
In October 2021, promising athlete Agnes Tirop (25 years old), double world bronze medalist in the 10,000 m (2017, 2019) and 4th in the Tokyo Olympics in the 5,000 m, was found stabbed to death at her home in Iten, a famous training ground for long-distance running in the Rift Valley.
Her husband Emmanuel Ibrahim Rotich is being prosecuted for murder. He denies the charges. His trial is ongoing.
In April 2022, another Bahraini athlete of Kenyan origin, Damaris Mutua, was found dead in Iten. Her partner, who is on the run, is suspected of having killed her.
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