NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei has died at a Kenyan sanatorium the build she used to be being treated after 80% of her body used to be burned in an attack by her accomplice, a sanatorium reliable confirmed Thursday. She used to be 33.
Owen Menach, a spokesperson at Moi Teaching and Referral Successfully being heart in Eldoret metropolis, stated the long-distance runner died early Thursday, the morning after her organs failed. She had been fully sedated on admission.
Cheptegei competed in the girls’s marathon on the Paris Olympics now not up to a month before the attack. She executed in forty fourth self-discipline.
Her father, Joseph Cheptegei, told journalists on the sanatorium that he had misplaced a daughter who used to be “very supportive” and stated he hoped to get justice.
“As it is now, the prison who harmed my daughter is a murderer and I’m but to witness what the safety officials are doing,” the father stated. “He is level-headed free and could even wing.”
Trans Nzoia County Police Commander Jeremiah ole Kosiom stated Monday that Cheptegei’s accomplice, Dickson Ndiema, sold a can of gas, poured it on her and living her ablaze all over a difference Sunday. Ndiema used to be also burned and used to be being treated on the an analogous sanatorium.
Menach stated Ndiema used to be level-headed in the intensive care unit with burns over 30% of his body but used to be “bettering and actual.”
Cheptegei’s oldsters stated their daughter sold land in Trans Nzoia to be shut to Kenya’s many athletic coaching centers. A advise filed by the local chief stated Cheptegei and Ndiema were heard combating before the attack over the land the build her home used to be built.
The Uganda Athletics Federation eulogized Cheptegei on the social platform X, writing, “We are deeply saddened to bellow the passing of our athlete, Rebecca Cheptegei, early this morning who tragically fell victim to home violence. As a federation, we condemn such acts and demand justice. Would possibly perhaps presumably perhaps also her soul leisure In Peace.”
Uganda Olympic Committee President Donald Rukare known as the attack “a cowardly and mindless act that has resulted in the lack of a immense athlete.”
Kenya’s Sports Minister Kipchumba Murkomen stated that the authorities would be clear justice for the victim.
“This tragedy is a stark reminder that we must attain extra to strive against gender-essentially essentially based mostly violence in our society, which in most recent years has reared its grotesque head in elite carrying circles,” he wrote in an announcement.
Uganda’s First Lady Janet Museveni known as Cheptegei’s death as a result of home violence “deeply annoying.”
International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach stated, “Rebecca’s participation in the Paris 2024 girls’s marathon used to be a source of inspiration, pleasure and pleasure.”
The United Nations strongly condemned Cheptegei’s death.
U.N. spokesman Stéphane Dujarric recalled the phrases of Secretary-Current António Guterres who stated, “We level-headed are living in a male-dominated culture that leaves girls susceptible by denying them equality in dignity and rights.”
Every 11 minutes on moderate, a girl or lady is killed by an intimate accomplice or household member somewhere in the arena, per figures from UN Ladies folks, the company promoting gender equality, and the U.N. Dwelling of job on Treatment and Crime.
“We pointless to claim possess that the ultimate numbers are much higher,” Dujarric stated.
He stated the denial of girls’s rights leaves societies less quiet, economies less affluent, and the arena less beautiful, “but a clear world is feasible.”
In 2023, Ugandan Olympic runner and steeplechaser Benjamin Kiplagat used to be realized pointless with stab wounds. In 2022, Kenyan-born Bahraini athlete Damaris Muthee used to be realized pointless and a postmortem advise stated that she used to be strangled. In 2021, long-distance runner Agnes Tirop used to be stabbed to death at her house. Her husband, Ibrahim Rotich, used to be arrested and charged with extinguish, the case is ongoing.
Kenya’s high rates of violence against girls possess brought on marches by unprecedented electorate in towns and cities this twelve months.
Four in 10 girls or an estimated 41% of relationship or married Kenyan girls possess skilled physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their most recent or most most recent accomplice, per the Kenya Demographic and Successfully being Watch 2022.
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