Rebecca Cheptegei, a Ugandan marathon runner who competed in the Paris Olympics last month becomes the latest victim of athletes who were killed by their partners in Kenya. 

Cheptegei died days after she was burned by her boyfriend in Kenya, making her the third female athlete to be killed in the country since October 2021.

Before Cheptegei death, there are two other athletes whose death were linked to their partners in Kenya. 

Samuel Wanjiru (15, May, 2011)

Wanjiru was  Kenyan long-distance runner who won the 2008 Beijing Olympics Marathon in an Olympic record time of 2:06:32; becoming the first Kenyan to win the Olympic Gold in the marathon. He became the youngest gold medallist in the marathon since 1932.

Wanjiru didn't live long to see another Olympic Games as he was confirmed dead On 15 May 2011, Where suffered internal injuries from a fall off a balcony at his home in Nyahururu. 

Police said Wanjiru's wife, Triza Njeri, had come home to find him in bed with another woman. She locked the couple in the bedroom and ran outside. Wanjiru then died after falling from the balcony.

The mother of the late Beijing Olympics men marathon champions sensationally claimed at an inquest into his death on Tuesday that his son was murdered by six men who had conspired with his widow Trizah Njeri.

Agnes Tirop  (13, October, 2021) 

Tirop was a Kenyan professional long-distance runner. She won bronze medals in the 10,000 metres at the 2017 and 2019 World Athletics Championships. At the 2015 IAAF World Cross Country Championships, Tirop became the second-youngest ever gold medallist in the women's race, after Zola Budd. At the time of her death in 2021, she was the world-record holder in the 10 kilometres women's-only event

The promising Kenyan long distance runner was found found dead in her home in Iten, Elgeyo-Marakwet County, on 13 October 2021 with  multiple stab wounds in the neck and abdomen.

She died at age 25 after being stabbed by her husband. She was buried in her hometown in the Kenyan highlands at a funeral attended by over 1,000 mourner

Rebecca Cheptegei ( 5, September, 2024)

 Cheptegei was a Ugandan cross country, long-distance and marathon runner, who is the national record holder in the latter discipline in a non-mixed race.

She was born in Uganda but later moved to Kenya and bought property there to be closer to athletic training centres.

On 1 September 2024, she was attacked and set on fire in her residence in Trans-Nzoia County, Kenya. She sustained burns covering 80% of her body, leaving her in critical condition in hospital. Police reported that her former boyfriend doused her with petrol and set her ablaze after an argument. Her attacker was also hospitalised after being injured in the attack.  She died due to multiple organ failures as a result of her burns at a hospital in Eldoret on 5 September, at the age of 33.