Olympic marathon athlete Rebecca Cheptegei was getting ready to leave her house in the western Kenyan highlands for church early on Sunday, September 1. Her former partner phoned a buddy to see if he could borrow a lighter.
Dennis Masai Chepkongin, a retired runner, told Reuters that Cheptegei told him he had “an emergency” and was leaving town. Dennis Masai Chepkongin lived in the Mount Elgon region.
According to Chepkongin, “he became very secretive when I asked him why,” and he turned down the offer.
According to her relatives and the authorities, Cheptegei’s ex-boyfriend Dickson Ndiema Marangach doused the runner in gasoline and lit her on fire a few hours later.
Both would pass away from their burns in the hospital. Marangach could not be reached for comment before his death, and Reuters was unable independently to verify the details of what happened that day.
When Marangach passed away, a police official—who wished to remain anonymous due to lack of authorization to communicate with the media—confirmed that he was being investigated for murder.
The area surrounding Cheptegei’s house in the sleepy town of Kinyoro was the scene of a brutal demise. When reporters arrived there last weekend, the ground was burned and covered in gasoline. After being attacked with a machete, Dorcas, her 17-year-old sister, sat sobbing silently, either hunched over or staring blankly into space.
The world was startled to learn of Cheptegei’s death so soon after the athlete had represented Uganda in the Olympics in Paris. However, Cheptegei’s parents told Reuters that neither she nor her family were surprised.
Elite female athletes in Kenya face a dark side of success, as they often become targets for predatory men who try to manipulate them and wrest control of their assets. The story of Cheptegei, the third female runner killed in Kenya since 2021, sheds light on this issue. Cheptegei was a 33-year-old single mother of two born in Uganda, who had walked out of her relationship with Marangach, a man who allegedly beat her up and broke her phone. She had gone to the police at least three times this year to report threats and physical abuse by Marangach.
Cheptegei’s death left other female runners despairing at the continuing inaction of authorities and Athletics Kenya, the national governing body for the sport. Joan Chelimo, co-founder of Tirop’s Angels, a non-profit established to support domestic violence victims after Kenyan long-distance runner Agnes Tirop was stabbed to death in 2021, said that no one is held accountable. Tirop’s husband, Ibrahim Rotich, was charged with her murder but pleaded not guilty and was released on bail last year.
Kenyan-Bahraini runner Damaris Mutua was also killed in 2022, with her Ethiopian boyfriend being named as a suspect. Kenya’s Sports Minister Kipchumba Murkomen has condemned the attack on Cheptegei and promised action. An adviser to President William Ruto said authorities were working to prevent gender-based violence in sports, but activists say its efforts are falling short. Violence against women is a major problem in Kenya, with one in three adolescent girls and women having been victims. Femicide Count Kenya, an NGO that uses media reports to document intentional killings with a gender-related motivation, has recorded 157 killings of women so far in 2024, the most in a year since it began collecting data in 2019.
Elizabeth Keitany, executive board member of Athletics Kenya, said her team had helped six young women escape abusive relationships since 2022, offering them a safe place to live and counseling services. Esther Chemtai, a 24-year-old fellow athlete of Cheptegei’s, said that she left him in January 2023 with the help of Tirop’s Angels.
Cheptegei, a Kenyan woman, was devoted to her family and bought land worth $1,200 in 2016. She met Marangach, a struggling motorcycle taxi driver and aspiring athlete, in Uganda in 2020 or 2021. Marangach encouraged her to move to Kenya and train in Iten, a hub for top distance runners and a high-altitude training attraction for tourists. Cheptegei built a house just over two hours’ drive from Iten in Kinyoro and moved there in 2021.
Marangach was in possession of a deed to the land, but Cheptegei’s father rejects this claim. He showed Reuters a photo of a land deed signed and stamped in March 2021, which listed Rebecca as the purchaser of the plot in Kinyoro, and Marangach as a witness. Cheptegei supported Marangach financially, and his elder sister, Naomi Chebet Kiprop, said the couple had pooled funds to buy the land where Cheptegei lived with her daughters.
Cheptegei ended the relationship with Marangach in January, and in May, she reported him to the police after he sent men to try to intimidate her into handing over her land and house. The local police official said officers saw the problem as a conflict about land after the relationship soured, adding that police thought they had “made peace” between the two.
Marangach attacked Rebecca and lunged at Dorcas with a machete when she tried to intervene. Dorcas stressed her sister’s drive to survive, saying it was important for a woman to have her own money, be empowered, and not depend on anyone. Cheptegei suffered burns to 80% of her body when she was hospitalized.
(Reuters)
