Ugandan Olympic Marathon runner Rebecca Cheptegei has died on Thursday, four days after she was doused with petrol and burned alive by her boyfriend in Kenya, in the latest attack on an athlete in the country.
Kenyan and Ugandan media reported that 33-year-old Cheptegei, who took part in the Paris Olympics, suffered burns to more than 75 percent of her body in Sunday’s attack.
She becomes the third high-profile female athlete to be killed in Kenya since October 2021.
“We have learnt of the sad passing on of our Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei… following a vicious attack by her boyfriend,” Donald Rukare, president of Uganda Olympics Committee, said in a post on X.
“May her gentle soul rest in peace and we strongly condemn violence against women,” he said.
Rebecca, who finished 44th in Paris, was admitted to a hospital in the Kenyan Rift Valley city of Eldoret after the attack.
Cheptegei “passed today morning at 5:30 am after her organs failed,” Owen Menach, senior director of clinical services at Moi University and Referral Hospital, told Reuters, adding that a full report on the circumstances of her death would be published Thursday afternoon.
Kenyan newspaper The Standard reported that her attacker was also injured in the incident and was admitted to the intensive care with 30% burns, quoting doctors at the same hospital.
Sports Minister in Kenya, Kipchumba Murkomen described Cheptegei’s death as a loss “to the entire region”.
“This tragedy is a stark reminder that we must do more to combat gender-based violence in our society, which in recent years has reared its ugly head in elite sporting circles,” he said in a statement.
The Uganda Athletics Federation has demanded justice for Cheptegei.
The athlete’s father, Joseph Cheptegei, told reporters in Eldoret that he was asking the government to protect her children and property “so that no one enters her house and takes anything.”
“The land … has brought problems,” he said, after local media reported that the mother of two and her boyfriend had argued over the property in the days before the attack.
Uganda’s Minister of State for Sports, Peter Ogwang, said the murder was being investigated by Kenyan authorities which highlights violence against women in the East African country.
Almost 34% of Kenyan girls and women aged 15 to 49 have experienced physical violence, according to 2022 government data, with married women particularly at risk.
The 2022 survey found that 41% of married women have experienced violence.
In October 2021, Olympic sprinter Agnes Tirop, a rising star in Kenya’s highly competitive sports scene, was found dead at her home in the town of Iten, with multiple injuries to her neck.
Ibrahim Rotich, her husband, was charged with the murder but he pleaded not guilty. The case is ongoing.
The murder of the 25-year-old shocked Kenya and current which prompted former athletes to create the “Tirop’s Angels” in 2022 to fight domestic violence.
One of the founders of the non-profit organization Joan Chelimo, told Reuters that female athletes were at high risk of exploitation and violence by men lured by their money.
“They get into these traps of predators who pose in their lives as lovers,” she said.
Source: Reuters
