Ugandan athlete Rebecca Cheptegei’s alleged killer and former partner dies from burns
Rebecca Cheptegei of Uganda in the women’s Marathon Final during day eight of the World Athletics Championships Budapest 2023 on August 26, 2023 in Budapest, Hungary. (Photo by Sam Mellish/Getty Images)
NAIROBI, September 10, 2024 - Dickson Ndiema Marangach, the former boyfriend and alleged killer of Ugandan Olympian Rebecca Cheptegei, has succumbed to the burns he sustained when he doused Cheptegei with petrol and set her on fire at her home following a disagreement on September 1.
According to Daniel Lang’at, a spokesperson at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret in western Kenya where Marangach was being treated, he died at 7.50 p.m. (12.50 p.m. ET) on Monday. “He died from his injuries, the burns he sustained,” Lang’at told Reuters.
CHEPTEGEI'S DEATH Nine days ago, Cheptegei, who competed in the marathon at the Paris 2024 Olympics, was returning home from church with her children when she was brutally attacked by Marangach. The 33-year-old suffered burns to more than 75% of her body and died four days later at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital after suffering multiple organ failure. It was reported that Marangach had suffered 30% burns from the incident.
GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE Cheptegei’s murder further highlights the disturbing issue of femicide in Kenya. In January this year, thousands of women and men marched in Nairobi and other major cities in the East African country calling for an end to femicide and violence against women. “This tragedy is a stark reminder of the urgent need to combat gender-based violence, which has increasingly affected even elite sports,” Kenya’s Sports Minister Kipchumba Murkomen said.
"VIOLENT MURDER" The United Nations condemned Cheptegei’s “violent murder” with Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesperson for the Secretary-General telling journalists in New York that it “illustrates a much bigger problem that is all too often ignored.”
Since October 2021, Cheptegei, who won gold at the World Mountain and Trail Running Championships in Chiang Mai, Thailand in 2022 and finished 44th at the Paris Olympics this year, is the third elite sportswoman to be killed in Kenya. According to local media reports the athlete and her ex-partner had a dispute over a piece of land which she bought in Trans Nzoia county, near Kenya’s elite athletics training centres, and built a house.
PAST CASES In 2021, record-breaking runner Agnes Tirop, 25, was stabbed to death at her home in Iten. The trial of her estranged husband Emmanuel Ibrahim Rotich over her murder is still ongoing. He has denied the charges.
In 2022, Kenyan-born Bahraini athlete Damaris Muthee Mutua was found dead, and a post-mortem examination said she had been strangled, suspected to have been killed by her Ethiopian boyfriend.
NOT POSITIVE NEWS “Justice really would have been for him (Marangach) 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, founded in in memory of Agnes Tirop. “The shock of Rebecca’s death is still fresh,” Cheptoo told Reuters.
PHYSICAL VIOLENCE A national survey in 2022 found that at least 34% of women in Kenya had experienced physical violence and 41% of married women had faced violence. Globally, according to figures from UN Women and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), every 11 minutes on average, a woman or girl is killed by an intimate partner or family member.
According to Daniel Lang’at, a spokesperson at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret in western Kenya where Marangach was being treated, he died at 7.50 p.m. (12.50 p.m. ET) on Monday. “He died from his injuries, the burns he sustained,” Lang’at told Reuters.
CHEPTEGEI'S DEATH Nine days ago, Cheptegei, who competed in the marathon at the Paris 2024 Olympics, was returning home from church with her children when she was brutally attacked by Marangach. The 33-year-old suffered burns to more than 75% of her body and died four days later at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital after suffering multiple organ failure. It was reported that Marangach had suffered 30% burns from the incident.
GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE Cheptegei’s murder further highlights the disturbing issue of femicide in Kenya. In January this year, thousands of women and men marched in Nairobi and other major cities in the East African country calling for an end to femicide and violence against women. “This tragedy is a stark reminder of the urgent need to combat gender-based violence, which has increasingly affected even elite sports,” Kenya’s Sports Minister Kipchumba Murkomen said.
"VIOLENT MURDER" The United Nations condemned Cheptegei’s “violent murder” with Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesperson for the Secretary-General telling journalists in New York that it “illustrates a much bigger problem that is all too often ignored.”
Since October 2021, Cheptegei, who won gold at the World Mountain and Trail Running Championships in Chiang Mai, Thailand in 2022 and finished 44th at the Paris Olympics this year, is the third elite sportswoman to be killed in Kenya. According to local media reports the athlete and her ex-partner had a dispute over a piece of land which she bought in Trans Nzoia county, near Kenya’s elite athletics training centres, and built a house.
PAST CASES In 2021, record-breaking runner Agnes Tirop, 25, was stabbed to death at her home in Iten. The trial of her estranged husband Emmanuel Ibrahim Rotich over her murder is still ongoing. He has denied the charges.
In 2022, Kenyan-born Bahraini athlete Damaris Muthee Mutua was found dead, and a post-mortem examination said she had been strangled, suspected to have been killed by her Ethiopian boyfriend.
NOT POSITIVE NEWS “Justice really would have been for him (Marangach) 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, founded in in memory of Agnes Tirop. “The shock of Rebecca’s death is still fresh,” Cheptoo told Reuters.
PHYSICAL VIOLENCE A national survey in 2022 found that at least 34% of women in Kenya had experienced physical violence and 41% of married women had faced violence. Globally, according to figures from UN Women and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), every 11 minutes on average, a woman or girl is killed by an intimate partner or family member.
News from the same category
