Image: COURTESY
All these athletes died in their prime.
Kenyans have been thrown into mourning following an announcement of the death of 24 year old marathoner Kelvin Kiptum.
He died Feb 11,2011
1.Samuel Wanjiru
The marathoner was 24 years when he died in 2011.
Wanjiru died from a fall off a balcony at his home in Nyahururu. There were conflicting accounts of his death.
2. Damaris Muthee Mutua
Damaris, 28, was found dead in Iten in 2021.
Her boyfriend, an Ethiopian, was the suspect in the killing. Police found her decomposing body in the house.
Mutua’s body was found on the bed in the boyfriends home. She had been strangled. According to the police, the man confessed to a friend that he had killed her, then went into hiding.
Image: Facebook
3. Agnes Tirop
Agnes Tirop, a former world cross country champion, was murdered in 2021, at her Iten home.
Tirop has supposedly told her siblings that she wanted to leave her husband Rotich. She said that he had been spending her money at bars while she was away, and that she was tired of it.
He was suspecting she was having an affair and pointed fingers at her childhood friend.
Tirop was found stabbed and beaten to death in her home.
Rotich had fled, leaving a note, reportedly confessing to the crime and saying that the relationship had been “full of fights.”
Police found a knife and a club at the scene. Rotich later admitted in an affidavit to killing Tirop, but pleaded not guilty to her murder, claiming that he was provoked into killing her because he believed she was having an affair with her childhood friend:
She was buried on what would have been her 26th birthday.
4. Kelvin Kiptum
The marathoner died Feb 11 in a road crash.
He was in the company of his Rwandan coach Gervais Hakizimana, according to authorities.
Kiptum is said to have lost control of this vehicle, veered off the road and then hit a tree. Kiptum and Hakizimana died at the scene and another passenger was taken to a hospital.
5.Nicholas Bett
The 400m world hurdle champion die din August 2018 in a grisly road accident in Nandi.
He was 28.
The athlete died on the spot after the car he was driving veered off the road and landed in a ditch.
6. Benjamin Kiplagat
The Kenyan-Ugandan athlete was found dead in his car in Eldoret with a deep knife wound to his neck.
The steeplechaser had a career spanning about 18 years, and won the silver medal in the 3,000m steeplechase at the 2008 World Junior Championships and bronze at the Africa Championships in 2012.
He made the semi-finals of the event in the 2012 Olympics in London and also competed in Rio in 2016.
