The man accused of killing the Olympic marathon runner Rebecca Cheptegei by dousing her in petrol and setting her alight has also died, according to the hospital where they were both treated.
Cheptegei’s former boyfriend Dickson Ndiema died at the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret on Monday night after being admitted to intensive care following the attack on Cheptegei.
The death was initially reported by both the Times and the Star in Kenya, before a spokesperson for the hospital confirmed the news.
Ndiema died at 7.50pm (4.50pm BST) on Monday, said Daniel Lang’at, a spokesperson for Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital.
“He died from his injuries, the burns he sustained,” Lang’at told Reuters. Local media reported that he had suffered 30 per cent burns when he assaulted Cheptegei as she was returning home from church with her children.
World Athletics have pledged to investigate how they can protect female athletes following Cheptegei’s death.
Violence on females shockingly common in Kenya
A national survey in 2022 found that more than a third of women in Kenya had experienced physical violence and Cheptegei’s death followed the killing of two others runners — Damaris Mutua and Agnes Tirop — in the same Rift Valley running hub of Kenya in recent years.
Rights groups say female athletes in Kenya, where many international runners train in the high-altitude highlands, are at a high risk of exploitation and violence at the hands of men drawn to their prize money, which far exceeds local incomes.
“Justice really would have been for him 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.
“The shock of Rebecca’s death is still fresh,” Cheptoo told Reuters.