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The hideous attack against Ugandan Olympic women’s marathoner Rebecca Cheptegei claimed the attacker on Monday when former partner Dickson Ndiema Marangach died from burns resulting from his attack on her.
In a statement reported by Reuters, Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital chief executive Philip Kirwa explained he died at 6:30 p.m. local time in Elodoret (KEN):
“He developed respiratory failure as a result of the severe airway burns and sepsis that led to his eventual death.”
Marangach had burns over 41% or more of his body as a result of his attack on Cheptegei, who he doused her with gasoline and set her on fire after she returned home from church with her two children on Sunday, 1 September.
Cheptegei had burns over more then 75% of her body and was taken to the same hospital, where she passed away on Thursday (5th). The two had an argument, apparently over ownership of a piece of land that one of them had purchased.
While Marangach was being treated, he was also in police custody and a murder investigation was ongoing.
The incident was another in a line of attacks against women in Kenya; Sports Minister Kipchumba Murkomen said, “This tragedy is a stark reminder of the urgent need to combat gender-based violence, which has increasingly affected even elite sports.”
The 2021 stabbing death of 25-year-old star Agnes Tirop, the 2015 women’s World Cross Country champion and a two-time Worlds 10,000 m bronze medalist, raised the profile of violence against women in Kenya, and a 2022 national survey showed 34% of women had experienced some form of physical violence.
Viola Cheptoo, the co-founder of Tirop’s Angels, a support group for domestic violence survivors, told Reuters:
“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.”
Cheptegei, a gold medalist at the 2022 World Mountain and Trail Running Championships in Chiang Mai (THA) and who placed 44th in the Olympic women’s marathon in Paris, had two children, ages nine and 11, reported to have been fathered by another man, living in Uganda.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has promised to name a sports facility for Cheptegei to continue her memory.
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