The former partner of Ugandan athlete Rebecca Cheptegei, accused of her murder, has succumbed to burns sustained during the attack, the Kenyan hospital treating him announced on Tuesday, September 10, 2024.
Rebecca Cheptegei, 33, a marathon runner who competed in the Paris Olympics, endured burns covering over 75% of her body in the September 1 assault. She tragically passed away four days later. The alleged perpetrator, her former boyfriend, Dickson Ndiema Marangach, died on Monday at 7:50 p.m. (1650 GMT), confirmed Daniel Lang’at, spokesperson for Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret, western Kenya, where Cheptegei had also been treated.
“He died from his injuries, the burns he sustained,” Lang’at told Reuters. According to local media, Marangach suffered 30% burns during the attack, which occurred while Cheptegei was returning home from church with her children.
Cheptegei, who finished 44th in the Paris marathon, is the third elite female athlete to be killed in Kenya since October 2021, raising concerns about domestic violence, particularly within Kenya’s athletic community.
Rights groups warn that female athletes in Kenya, many of whom train in the country’s high-altitude regions, face significant risks of violence and exploitation. These athletes, whose prize earnings far exceed local incomes, are often targeted by men seeking financial gain. “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 the athletic community.
“The shock of Rebecca’s death is still fresh,” Cheptoo added. She co-founded Tirop’s Angels in honor of Agnes Tirop, a rising star in Kenya’s athletics scene, who was found dead with multiple stab wounds in her home in October 2021. Tirop’s husband, Ibrahim Rotich, has been charged with her murder and pled not guilty; the case remains ongoing.
According to government data from 2022, nearly 34% of Kenyan girls and women aged 15 to 49 have experienced physical violence, with married women at a particularly high risk. The survey found that 41% of married women had faced violence. Globally, a woman is killed by a family member every 11 minutes, according to a 2023 UN Women report.
