The man who attacked Ugandan runner Rebecca Cheptegei has died from injuries sustained when he poured petrol over the Olympic athlete, the Kenyan hospital treating him said.
Police said that Dickson Ndiema Marangach assaulted Cheptegei in her home in western Kenya on September 1. The mother of two sustained 80 percent burns and died last week.
In the course of the attack, Marangach also incurred 30 percent burns and was being treated in the intensive care unit at the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital (MTRH) in Kenya’s Rift Valley city of Eldoret.
Marangach died at 7:50pm local time (16:50 GMT) on Monday, Daniel Lang’at, a spokesperson at the hospital said.
“He died from his injuries, the burns he sustained,” Lang’at told reporters.
Police in Kenya said Marangach snuck into her home in Endebess, near the border with Uganda, while she was at church with her children aged nine and 11.
Her father, Joseph Cheptegei, told reporters the dispute with Marangach had been over the property where she lived with her sister and daughters. He told Kenyan media last week that Marangach had bought five litres (1.3 gallons) of petrol and then hid out in a chicken coop before the attack.
“He poured the petrol and lit her on fire. When she called her sister to help, he threatened her with a machete and she ran away.”
The police said the couple had “constantly had family wrangles”.
The United Nations condemned her “violent murder”, with Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for UN chief Antonio Guterres, saying: “Gender-based violence is one of the most prevalent human rights violations in the world, and should be treated as such.”