September 14 is the burial day of Olympian Rebecca Cheptegei, a Ugandan.

Organizers announced on Sunday that Rebecca Cheptegei, an Olympic runner from Uganda, will have her funeral on September 14 in her own country. Rebecca passed away in Kenya after her boyfriend set her on fire.

The 33-year-old, who took part in the women’s marathon at the Olympics in Paris last month, passed away on Thursday from serious burns, four days after being doused in gasoline and set ablaze at her western Kenyan home.

“September 14 in Kongasis sub-county in Bukwo district (eastern Uganda) has been designated as the burial date of Rebecca Cheptegei,” Beatrice Ayikoru, secretary general of the Uganda Olympic Committee and a member of the funeral planning committee, said AFP.

The family home of Cheptegei is located in Bukwo, which is 380 kilometers (240 miles) northeast of Kampala, the capital of Uganda, near the Kenyan border.

Cheptegei’s death, the most recent horrifying instance of gender-based violence in Kenya, where at least two other athletes have perished at the hands of their partners, was met with grief and indignation.

More than 80% of her body was burned, according to medical professionals, during the incident on Sunday of last week.

Dickson Ndiema Marangach, Cheptegei’s Kenyan companion, is reportedly the one who carried it out; he is undergoing treatment in a hospital after suffering severe burns.

According to Kenyan media, Cheptegei’s two children, who are nine and eleven years old, saw the incident.

“Unimaginable circumstances”

The city of Paris said on Friday that it would rename a sports facility in honor of Cheptegei, who placed 44th in her first Olympic marathon in August.

The athlete, who held the record for the women’s marathon in Uganda and was a sergeant in the Uganda Peoples’ Defence Forces, has received an overwhelming amount of tributes.

Sebastian Coe, President of World Athletics, remarked, “Our sport has lost a talented athlete in the most tragic and unthinkable circumstances.”

“Rebecca was a highly adaptable runner with plenty left to give on the cross-country, mountain, and road courses.”

In order to “assess how our safeguarding policies might be enhanced to include abuse outside of the sport, and bring together stakeholders from all areas of athletics to combine forces to protect our female athletes from abuse of all kinds,” Coe said he was in talks with members of the World Athletics governing council.

Cheptegei’s passing has brought attention to femicide and domestic abuse in Kenya, where Kipchumba Murkomen, the minister of sports, stated that it serves as a “stark reminder” that more has to be done to stop gender-based violence.

According to Stephane Dujarric, a spokesman for UN Secretary Antonio Guterres, gender-based violence is one of the most common human rights abuses in the world and should be punished as such. The UN also denounced her “violent murder.”

Since 2021, she was the third female athlete to die at the hands of her partner.