Rebecca Cheptegei becomes third female athlete murdered in Kenya in three years

Ugandan athlete Rebecca Cheptegei died last week from injuries she sustained when her former boyfriend poured petrol on her and set her alight.

She became the third woman athlete to die at the hands of a man in western Kenya in the past three years.

Cheptegei, 33, built a solid 15-year career running cross country, marathons and other long distance races. She represented Uganda at the Paris Olympics last month and held the Ugandan national women’s marathon record.

She was born and raised in Bukwo, a Ugandan district bordering Kenya.

Over the course of her career, she bought land and built a house in Trans Nzoia county in western Kenya, to be closer to elite training facilities.

At the time of her attack, she was reportedly in conflict with her boyfriend, Dickson Ndiema Marangach, a Kenyan athlete, over this property.

On the fateful day, according to Kenyan police, Cheptegei and her two daughters had just returned from church when Marangach sneaked into her house and attacked.

The fire he lit also burnt him, but not nearly as severely as Cheptegei.

She suffered burns over 80% of her body, according to the head of Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital, where she later died.

“It led to multiple organ failure. We tried our best but we did not succeed. Looking at her age and the over 80% burns she suffered, the hope of recovery was slim,” Kimani Mbugua, the head of the hospital’s intensive care unit, told journalists.

“This tragedy is a stark reminder of the urgent need to combat gender-based violence, which has increasingly affected even elite sports,” Kenyan Sports Minister Kipchumba Murkomen said in a statement.

One in three women in Kenya report suffering physical violence or abuse, according to a 2022 official report, and success puts women athletes particularly at risk.

In February 2023, Olympic gold medallist Vivian Cheruiyot told a Kenyan newspaper that her husband had taken control of her properties, including gas stations and farmland, and that, when she objected, he abused her physically and psychologically.

In April 2022, Kenyan-born Damaris Muthee Mutua, 28, was found strangled in the town of Iten, a world-famous high-altitude training centre.

The October before that, World Athletics Championships bronze medallist Agnes Tirop was found stabbed to death, again in Iten.

In both instances, their intimate partners were the suspected murderers.

In 2021 Edith Muthoni, a 27-year-old runner living in Nairobi, was found with her throat slit with a machete.

In 2014 another woman Kenyan runner, Lucy Kabuu, was sued by her ex-husband for control of half of her properties.

“The husbands expect them to bring home money,” Njeri Migwi, the executive director of Usikimye, an advocacy group that focuses on gender-based violence, told the New Yorker in 2023.

“The minute they want certain levels of independence, the men abuse them.”

The men implicated in these attacks have faced few consequences. Mutua’s body was found in the house of an Ethiopian athlete named Eskinder Hailemaryam Folie, and a police autopsy said she was strangled.

Folie went on the run, and was reported to have gone back to Ethiopia. He is still at large.

Tirop’s husband, Ibrahim Rotich – a man 15 years her senior who became her manager after meeting her as a secondary school student – was arrested for her murder and reportedly confessed. He is out of prison on bail.

It remains to be seen what, if any, charges will be brought against Dickson Ndiema Marangach.

This article first appeared in The Continent, the pan-African weekly newspaper produced in partnership with the Mail & Guardian. It is designed to be read and shared on WhatsApp. Download your free copy at thecontinent.org