Rebecca Cheptegei, a Ugandan athlete who tragically died after being set on fire by her former boyfriend, has been joined in death by the attacker himself, who succumbed to his injuries, according to officials at a Kenyan hospital.
Recall that Dickson Ndiema assaulted Cheptegei, a marathon runner, over a week ago as she was returning home from church. He doused her with petrol and set her ablaze.
Authorities revealed that the two had been involved in a dispute over a small piece of land in north-west Kenya, where Cheptegei had been residing and training.
Ndiema passed away on Monday night in the intensive care unit of Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital, where he had been receiving treatment for burns that covered over 30% of his body.
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“It’s true he has died from the [burn] injuries,” Dr. Owen Menach of Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital confirmed to the BBC.
Cheptegei, who had suffered burns over 80% of her body, died last Thursday from the injuries sustained in the attack.
Following the attack, police were treating Cheptegei’s death as a murder case, with Ndiema being the main suspect. Both Cheptegei and Ndiema were admitted to Moi Hospital in Eldoret for treatment before their deaths.
The 33-year-old Olympian was the third athlete in Kenya to be killed in the last three years, with intimate partners often named as the primary suspects in such cases.
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Originally born on the Kenyan side of the Kenya-Uganda border, Cheptegei crossed over to represent Uganda in her athletic pursuits after failing to make a breakthrough in Kenya. She joined the Uganda People’s Defence Forces in 2008 and rose to the rank of sergeant.
She competed in this year’s Paris Olympics, finishing 44th in the marathon. Despite the result, she was regarded as a “champion” in her home community.
Cheptegei is scheduled to be buried on Saturday at her ancestral home in Bukwo, Uganda.
Violence against women remains a major issue in Kenya, with a 2022 national survey revealing that at least 34% of women had experienced physical violence.
