Ex-boyfriend accused of setting Rebecca Cheptegei on fire dies from burns – National

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Ex-boyfriend accused of setting Rebecca Cheptegei on ***** ***** from burns – National

The former boyfriend of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei, who was accused of setting her on *****, has ***** from burns sustained during the *******.

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Cheptegei, 33, ***** last week after suffering burns to about 80 per cent of her body. Her ex-partner, Dickson Ndiema Marangach, allegedly doused her in gasoline and set her ablaze over a land dispute. She had just recently competed in the marathon at the Paris Olympics.

Marangach succumbed to his own ***** injuries on Monday, according to the Kenyan hospital where he was being treated. About 30 per cent of his body suffered burns after some of the gasoline used in the ******* splashed on him and he was also set on *****, local media reported.

“He developed respiratory ******** as a result of the severe airway burns and sepsis that led to his eventual ****** on Monday evening at 18:30 hours despite life-saving measures,” a press release from Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital said, according to the BBC.

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The ******* happened on Sept. 1 in western Trans Nzoia County, where Cheptegei lived near the Kenya-Uganda border. Cheptegei competed for Uganda in the Olympics but she lived in Kenya. Her parents said the long-distance runner bought land in Trans Nzoia to be near the county’s many athletic training centres.

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Marangach allegedly ambushed his former girlfriend in her house after she returned home from ******* with her children, BBC News reports. It’s believed he snuck into Cheptegei’s home with a five-litre jerry can of gasoline after the couple had a falling out over the Trans Nzoia property.

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Marangach was the main suspect in Cheptegei’s ******* inquiry, but now that he too has *****, the ********* case has been dropped and authorities will lead an inquest into the two deaths instead.

Cheptegei, who finished 44th in Paris, is the third elite sportswoman to be ******* in Kenya since October 2021. Her ****** has put the spotlight on domestic ********* in the East ******** country, particularly within its running community.

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 ********* at the hands of men drawn to their prize money, which far exceeds local incomes.

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“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 ********* in Kenya’s athletic community.

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“The shock of Rebecca’s ****** is still fresh,” Cheptoo told Reuters.

Cheptoo co-founded Tirop’s Angels in memory of Agnes Tirop, a rising star in Kenya’s highly competitive athletics scene, who was found ***** in her home in the town of Iten in October 2021, with multiple stab wounds to the neck.

Ibrahim Rotich, Tirop’s husband, was charged with her ******* and has pleaded not guilty. The case is ongoing.

Nearly 34 per cent of Kenyan ****** and women aged 15-49 years have suffered physical *********, according to government data from 2022, with married women at particular risk. The 2022 survey found that 41 per cent of married women had faced *********.

Globally, a woman is ******* by someone in her own family every 11 minutes, according to a 2023 U.N. Women study.

— With files from Reuters

&copy 2024 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

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