Ugandan Olympic athlete dies after being set on fire by former partner
(LONDON) — Ugandan long-distance runner Rebecca Cheptegei has died four days after being doused in petrol and set on fire by her former partner, authorities have announced.
Cheptegei — who had been receiving treatment at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret City, Kenya — succumbed to her injuries after sustaining burns to almost 80% of her body in the attack which occurred on Sunday.
Cheptegei was doused with a can of gasoline before being set on fire during an argument over land, according to a police report. Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital announced Cheptegei had passed away at the age of 33 after her organs failed on Thursday, according to hospital spokesperson Owen Menach.
“We have learnt of the sad passing of our Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei following a vicious attack by her boyfriend,” Donald Rukare, head of Uganda’s Olympics Committee, announced on Thursday writing on X. “May her gentle soul rest in peace and we strongly condemn violence against women. This was a cowardly and senseless act that has led to the loss of a great athlete. Her legacy will continue to endure.”
The Ugandan marathon runner had recently competed in the women’s marathon at the 2024 Paris Olympics, finishing in 44th place with a personal best time this season of 2:32:14, just a month before the fatal attack.
The Ugandan athlete had been living in northwestern Kenya, her father saying she recently bought land in Trans Nzoia County to build a home and be closer to Kenya’s athletics training centers.
Cheptegei’s Kenyan partner who carried out the attack — identified as Dickson Ndiema — is said to have sustained “serious burns” in the attack and is receiving treatment at the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital.
Uganda’s Athletics Federation said they are “deeply saddened” by the passing of Cheptegei.
“We are deeply saddened to announce the passing of our athlete, Rebecca Cheptegei early this morning who tragically fell victim to domestic violence,” the federation announced on Thursday. “As a federation, we condemn such acts and call for justice.”
The incident is the latest in a string of domestic violence cases against female athletes in Kenya.
In 2021, Kenyan distance runner Agnes Tirop was found stabbed to death in her home in Iten, in northwest Kenya. Just a few weeks earlier the rising athletics star had set a new women’s 10 kilometer road running record at the “Adizero: Road to Records” event in Herzogenaurach, Germany.
Tirop’s husband — Ibrahim Rotich — was subsequently arrested and charged with her murder. The case is currently ongoing.
Just a year later in 2022, Kenyan-Bahraini athlete Damaris Muthee Mutua, 28, was found murdered at her home in the same town, with Kenya’s Directorate of Criminal Investigations saying her cause of death was strangulation.
Kenyan police launched a manhunt for Mutua’s Ethiopian boyfriend — Eskinder Hailemaryam Folie — who is the main suspect in her murder and is alleged to have fled Kenya.
(KYIV, Ukraine) — Solomiya Fomeniuk, 16, recalled the Russian missile strike on the Okhmatdyt pediatric hospital in Ukraine earlier this month with horror, but also as a case of miraculous survival.
The girl was one of five children in the dialysis department at the moment of the attack on July 8. Two people — a doctor and a teacher — died as a result of the strike. A 7-year-old boy died later after he was transported away from the site, officials said.
Solomiya is disabled due to spinal hernia. The girl was admitted to the Kyiv hospital in late May 2022 after kidney failure.
“It’s the best clinic in Ukraine with a dialysis department and the only one where we can actually live to receive treatment regularly,” Solomiya’s mother, Oksana Fomeniuk, told ABC.
July 8 started as usual, she said, adding that even when the sirens went off, it didn’t initially scare the parents nor hospital staff.
“We’ve been here for a while, there were at least two impacts nearby during the past two years, but we always thought that a hospital is a safe place,” she said. “We are always anxious of course, but the kids learned to be courageous and patient since dialysis lasts for 4 to 5 hours and they can’t move during the procedure”.
However, when the first missiles hit the ground a couple kilometers from the hospital Oksana and others quickly went down to the shelter while doctors and nurses decided to go into the room to switch the kids off from the dialysis equipment and take them downstairs too. At that moment the missile hit.
“The first thing I saw was a piece of ceiling above me,” Solomiya recalled. “The equipment around prevented it from falling on me. I even raised my hands to try to hold it. I couldn’t breathe, there was dust and hot air around. And this smell…”
The girl saw two injured female doctors and a nurse lying on the floor bleeding, she said.
“One doctor, Anastasia, shook up from our cries, stood up and came up to pull me from the rubbles,” Solomiya said. “She is so tiny herself, but somehow managed to carry me to the window where men who ran from the street were already helping.”
Most of all the girl was worried about her mom, she confessed. Oksana herself barely got out of the rubble as the missile hit right at the foundation of the building.
“I smelled death,” she said. “I was in the rubble by the knees and couldn’t breathe because of the dust and the smell of the fuel.”
Oksana managed to run out through the back door.
“The second thing that shocked me was the scale of the damage,” she said. “Everything was in a black smoke, the building was destroyed, others half damaged. And all I could think about was where my Solomiya were.”
Oksana saw pieces of furniture and mattresses around, a body inside the premise, children coming out of the building through the broken windows, nurses carrying them out — and said she couldn’t believe that her daughter was alive.
“The nurse was running and shouting that Solomiya was OK and she was taken to another building, but I only believed that when I saw her there. I’m telling you, God saved us. Because if my girl were in another bed, as before, she could have died.”
Svitlana Lukyanchuk, a 30-year-old nephrologist, was later identified as the woman who had died in the room. The head of the dialysis department, Olha Babicheva, was also severely injured, officials said.
Young surgeon Oleh Golubchenko also said he believed he was lucky to be alive. Photos and videos of him in a white bloody uniform as he helped to search the debris went viral.
“My grandma carefully washed and whitened the robe right on the day before. I think I haven’t even thrown it away yet,” Golubchenko said, laughing both bitterly and with relief.
He had been performing a halo rhinoplasty on a 5-month-old patient on the morning of July 8.
“It’s a complicated procedure, but very interesting for me as a specialist. I pre-planned everything on the weekend, designed a model of the expected result,” Golubchenko told ABC.
The surgeon, anesthesiologist Yaroslav Ivanov, second surgeon Ihor Kolodko and nurse Olha Baranovych were halfway through the surgery when the siren went off in Kyiv.
“We don’t start operations during the air raid alert, but if we have already started we have to continue because you can’t move the patient quickly, especially a kid. So we carried on, stayed calm and even joked,” Golubchenko recalled.
When the missile hit the nearby building the wave threw him a couple of meters away from the operating table. “I was shocked for a few seconds and then saw everyone on the floor, bleeding. I shouted, ‘Is everyone alive?’ Olha, the nurse, was apparently severely injured, I saw her face really damaged. Yaroslav was bleeding too but got up.”
The doctors rushed to their little patient covered by surgical gowns. The boy was intubated, so Golubchenko couldn’t check if he was actually OK.
“I ran in the corridor to find an Ambu bag. The boy’s mom was there, shouting hysterically … I found the bag, the anesthesiologist disconnected the boy and quickly carried him away, I followed him … on my way I stopped to help another nurse as she was bleeding, so I bandaged her … There was such a chaos, total mess,” he said.
When Oleh went outside, the first person to call him was his friend, Rostyslav, who is also a surgeon, as he heard of the strike.
“I asked him to pick my patient and finish the surgery,” Golubchenko said. “He literally was here in 15 minutes and took the boy.” Taras, the boy who had been in surgery, and his parents are well now, Golubchenko said.
Only later did Golubchenko notice that he himself was covered in blood.
“I just felt something warm on my back and legs. Those were all small wounds from the glass. The doctors took everything away and said I had a concussion. I think I escaped with a fright. Big fright,” the surgeon said, sighing. “You know, before the surgery, the patient’s father asked me whether I believed in God. What a question! But now my outlook has transformed. I’m telling you, I went to the church the following day and prayed as I could.”
It’s painful for Golubchenko to see his department damaged as it had been just renovated. It was even more painful for many Ukrainians. Okhmatdyt, which in Ukrainian means protection of motherhood and childhood, is the best pediatric hospital in Ukraine. The doctors say they received incredible support from the management, while parents admit everything was done from the heart here, with great love to kids so that they experience as much fun and comfort here as possible.
In just one day, people and businesses raised more than $7 million for Okhmatdyt through the joint project of the UNITED24 presidential fundraising platform and Monobank. Germany accepted kids from the Kyiv hospital and pledged about 10 million euros for the reconstruction of the hospital.
Oleh Holubchenko said he himself received calls from his American colleagues who have helped a lot, in particular Smile Train, the world’s largest cleft-focused organization, and American Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Association
Fomeniuk and her daughter, Solomiya, said their hopes for Solomiya’s kidney transplantation, which they have been waiting for since last fall, have now now faded a bit due to the strike. But they still showed their support for the hospital and optimism for the doctors, who they hope keep going.
The attack on Okhmatdyt on July 8 was one of more than 1,800 such strikes in Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022, according to the World Health Organizaition.
Oksana confessed she sometimes thinks that horrible strike didn’t actually happen and it was just a horror movie because it doesn’t seem real.
“The missiles flying in Kyiv are not something normal by default,” she said. “When kids who are fighting for their lives have to suffer even more during the attacks is something totally, totally over the line.”
(TEL AVIV, Israel) — Officials in Israel’s defense establishment are now strenuously contradicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence that Israel maintain control of the narrow strip of land along the Gaza-Egypt border known as the Philadelphi Corridor, and warning that Netanyahu’s reluctance to sign a cease-fire deal with Hamas is pushing Israel into a potentially disastrous war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, according to Israeli military and senior defense officials who spoke with ABC News.
A war with Hezbollah in Lebanon “is easy to start, but very hard to end,” one such official said, on condition of anonymity. “We are losing the war, we are losing deterrence, we are losing the hostages.”
ABC News, along with other journalists and accompanied by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) personnel, was given access to the Philadelphi Corridor Friday — a narrow strip of territory roughly a half-mile wide that runs along the entirety of the southern Gaza border with Egypt. What were once blocks of apartments there are now piles of rubble amid a wasteland of dunes. Military officials told ABC News their work in the corridor was mostly done.
IDF and other Israeli military officials, including Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, have called a cease-fire and hostage release deal with Hamas the key to reaching a solution to Israel’s current regional strife. Israel and Hezbollah, which has been launching frequent rocket attacks against northern Israel from Lebanon, have each agreed to the broad parameters of a deal to decrease hostilities, but Hezbollah has said its participation is contingent on Israel reaching a cease-fire deal with Hamas in Gaza — which Hamas says must include all Israeli forces leaving Gaza.
However, many Israeli officials, including several who spoke with ABC News in recent days, believe that Netanyahu is purposely trying to torpedo negotiations to free the remaining Israeli hostages held by Hamas by insisting that the Philadelphi Corridor remain under Israel’s control, though they did not speak to possible reasons for Netanyahu’s insistence.
“If Philadelphi was so important, why did we wait eight months [into the war] to take it?” one senior Israeli official told ABC News.
Those officials now say that Israel is “stuck” in Gaza, able to kill Hamas militants and yet unable to advance one of the Israel-Hamas war’s primary aims, which Israeli Defense Minister Gallant recently told a small group of reporters was the “moral and ethical commitment” to bring Israel’s remaining hostages home. One official said that given the current circumstances, the best Israel can hope for is the repatriation of perhaps 20-30 hostages out of the 100 or so believed to remain in Gaza.
U.S. Envoy Amos Hochstein has been shuttling between Beirut and Jerusalem attempting to broker a cease-fire deal with Hezbollah that would see the latter retreat about 10 kilometers north of their current position in Lebanon, replaced by Lebanese Army forces and personnel from the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), in exchange for small Israeli concessions along the Israeli-Lebanese border. This is the same deal Israeli officials have said has been on the table since January.
Adding urgency to the current situation are general concerns about whether Israel possesses sufficient munitions and missile and rocket/missile interceptors to defend itself in any confrontation with Hezbollah. One senior Israeli official told ABC News that Israel’s hawks, clamoring for war with Hezbollah, are unaware of how difficult it is for Israel to procure Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) kits, necessary to convert so-called “dumb” bombs into precision guided weapons that use GPS coordinates to strike a target.
Israeli officials are also concerned that Hezbollah’s estimated arsenal of over 100,000 rockets and missiles could cause widespread damage across Israel. Those officials also warn of the potential for destruction on the Lebanese side. For example, during the 2006 Hezbollah-Israel war, Israel’s air force crippled Lebanon’s electrical grid and flattened large swaths of south Beirut.
Israel is also contending with how to respond to a recent attack from Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, after Israel says it intercepted and destroyed a Houthi surface-to-surface missile fired at Israel on Sunday.
The Houthi movement claimed responsibility for the missile attack, claiming in a statement that it was aimed at an “important military target” in the Tel Aviv region. The Houthis claimed the missile flew some 1,267 miles in less than 12 minutes and that Israeli anti-missile defenses “failed to intercept” the weapon. The IDF initially confirmed to ABC News that its defenses failed to intercept the missile but changed its conclusions upon further investigation.
The Israeli officials who spoke with ABC News said that Israel is vowing retaliation, and is investigating how the Houthis managed to twice penetrate Israel’s air defenses in two months.
“The Houthis are here to stay,” said one official, adding that the assessment is that they will likely keep attacking, regardless of a Hamas ceasefire.
(PARIS) — WNBA star Brittney Griner, who spent 10 months detained in Russia, said she is “head over heels” after the release of Americans Evan Gershkovich, Paul Whelan and Alsu Kurmasheva, who were freed from Russia in a prisoner swap.
“Great day,” Griner said from Paris, where she is competing in women’s basketball for Team USA at the Olympics. “I’m head-over-heels happy for the families right now. Any day that Americans come home, that’s a win.”
Griner, who spoke to reporters after the U.S. women beat Belgium 87-74 to advance to the quarterfinals, said finding out about their release was “definitely emotional.”
“I’m sure it will be even more emotional a little later on. Yeah, I’m just happy. This was a big win. Huge win,” Griner said.
“I know they have an amazing group of people that are going to help them out — them and their families,” she said, adding that she was “glad” to receive that help herself to “get re-acclimated into everyday life.”
Brittney Griner’s wife, Cherelle Griner, told “Good Morning America” that when they heard about the swap, “Everything stopped for us. There was no basketball in that moment. We just kind of went back to 2022 for us, and it was just reliving that moment.”
“We were overwhelmed with joy and just relief,” she continued. “Because for BG, it’s still an everyday memory for her, what it was like to come back home. We were so happy for the families to be reunited.”
Cherelle Griner said when her wife was detained in Russia, Whelan’s family was “arms wide open.”
“His sister sent me plenty of emails, just helping me through the process of what to expect,” she said.
Though the prisoners are now free, Cherelle Griner said she’d caution their families that “there’s so much work to be done.”
“Tune the world out and just love on them until they’re whole again,” she advises. “Because they have went through something that’s unimaginable.”
“Do not expect them to be the exact same person you last saw,” she added.
“Just having that grace to be able to, you know, be in the room with somebody that you once knew, and understanding that, you know, we’re all different people now, and giving them the space to, like, reintroduce themselves,” she said.
“Everyone at the San Antonio base was … helping me out with what to expect from someone who’s experienced a great amount of trauma,” she said.
In a statement on Instagram the Griners said they were “overwhelmed with joy and relief.”
“The Biden-Harris Administration showed true leadership once again by doing whatever it took to bring Americans home. Every American returned is a win,” they said.
The Griners said that while “today is one of celebration,” their “hearts go out to the many Americans still being held hostage overseas, and their families.” They called for people to “continue to do everything we can to shine a light on the remaining Americans detained.”
In February 2022, while returning to Russia to play basketball during the WNBA’s offseason, Brittney Griner was detained at Russia’s Sheremetyevo International Airport after she was accused of having vape cartridges containing cannabis oil, which is illegal in the country. The State Department said she was wrongfully detained.
In July 2022, Brittney Griner pleaded guilty to drug charges, saying that the vape cartridges containing cannabis oil were in her luggage unintentionally. She testified that she had “no intention” of breaking Russian law and packed the cartridges by accident.
The WNBA star was released in December 2022 after U.S. officials agreed to swap her for convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.
Brittney Griner told “GMA” co-anchor Robin Roberts earlier this year she expected to also see Whelan there when she was boarding the plane to leave Russia.
“When I walked on and I didn’t see him, I was like, ‘OK, maybe I’m early. Maybe he’s next. Maybe they are going to bring him next,'” she said of Whelan. “And when they closed the door, I was like … are you seriously not gonna let this man come home right now?”
“If it was left up to me in that trade, I would have went and got Paul and brought him home,” she said.
Whelan, a former U.S. Marine, was arrested in 2018 and accused of espionage. Both the Biden and Trump administrations denied the allegation against Whelan. He was convicted on the charges in 2020 and sentenced to 16 years in prison.
Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, was arrested by Russian authorities in 2023 for espionage, a charge he and U.S. officials flatly deny, with President Joe Biden saying he was targeted for being a journalist and an American. After an unusually hasty trial that played out behind closed doors, Gershkovich was found guilty and sentenced to 16 years in a high-security penal colony.
ABC News’ Ahmad Hemingway contributed to this report.