The previous boyfriend of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei, who died after he set 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 every 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.
“It is true he has died from the [burn] accidents,” Dr Owen Menach from Moi Educating and Referral Hospital advised the BBC.
Ms Cheptegei died last Thursday from 80% burns she sustained during the attack.
Neighbours advised the BBC that they heard screams earlier than Cheptegei got here operating in the direction of them shouting for assist.
Ndiema was to face expenses as police stated they had been treating Cheptegei’s dying as homicide, with the previous boyfriend named as the principle suspect.
Each of them had been admitted to Moi Hospital in Eldoret earlier than their deaths.
The 33-year-old athlete was the third athlete to be killed in Kenya within the final three years, the place intimate companions had been named as the principle suspects by police.
The Olympian was born on the Kenyan aspect of the Kenya-Uganda border, however selected to cross over and characterize Uganda to chase her athletics dream when she didn’t get a breakthrough in Kenya.
When she began entering into operating, she joined the Uganda Folksโs 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 referred to as her “champion”.
Cheptegei is about to be buried on Saturday at her ancestral residence in Bukwo, Uganda.
Assaults on ladies have change into a significant concern in Kenya. In 2022 at the least 34% of girls stated they’d skilled bodily violence, in accordance with a nationwide survey.
