The previous boyfriend of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei, who killed her by setting her on hearth, has himself died from burns sustained within the assault, a Kenyan hospital official has stated.
Dickson Ndiema ambushed the marathon runner as she returned residence from church greater than per week in the past, earlier than dousing her with petrol and setting her ablaze.
Native directors stated the 2 had been in battle over a small piece of land in north-west Kenya, the place Cheptegei lived and educated.
Ndiema died on Monday night time on the intensive care unit the place he had been admitted with greater than 30% burns on his physique.
“It is true he has died from the [burn] accidents,” Dr Owen Menach from Moi Instructing and Referral Hospital within the city of Eldoret advised the BBC.
Ms Cheptegei died final Thursday from 80% burns she sustained throughout the assault 4 days earlier.
Neighbours advised the BBC that they heard screams earlier than Cheptegei got here working in direction of them shouting for assist.
Ndiema was to face prices as police stated they had been treating Cheptegei’s dying as homicide, with the previous boyfriend named as the primary suspect.
Each of them had been admitted to Moi Hospital earlier than their deaths.
The 33-year-old Olympian was the third athlete to be killed in Kenya within the final three years, the place intimate companions had been named as the primary suspects by police.
In 2021, world-record holder Agnes Tirop was stabbed to dying and 6 months later Damaris Mutua was strangled.
Cheptegei was born on the Kenyan aspect of the Kenya-Uganda border, however selected to cross over and symbolize Uganda to chase her athletics dream when she didn’t get a breakthrough in Kenya.
When she began moving into working, she joined the Uganda Individuals’s Defence Forces in 2008 and rose to sergeant rank.
Her profession included competing on this 12 months’s Paris Olympics. Though she got here forty fourth within the marathon, individuals in her residence space known as her “champion”.
Cheptegei is ready to be buried on Saturday at her ancestral residence in Bukwo, Uganda.
Assaults on ladies have develop into a significant concern in Kenya. In 2022 no less than 34% of ladies stated that they had skilled bodily violence, in response to a nationwide survey.
