I saw an athlete on fire running towards me after an attack, a neighbour tells the BBC

Warning: This article contains details that some readers may find disturbing

Outside the house where Rebecca Cheptegei lived, flowers have been laid on the grass that was charred as the jogger rolled across the ground trying to extinguish the flames.

The 33-year-old Olympic athlete died on Thursday from injuries she sustained when her ex-partner doused her with gasoline and set her on fire at home with her two daughters a few days earlier.

“I was in the house and heard people shouting ‘fire’. When I came out I saw Rebecca running towards my burning house, shouting ‘help me’,” Ms Cheptegei’s immediate neighbour Agnes Barabara told the BBC through tears.

“As I went to get water and started calling for help, her attacker reappeared and doused her with more petrol, but then he got burned too and ran out into the garden to try to put it out. That’s when we went to help Rebecca.”

“I have never seen anyone burned alive in my life. I didn’t eat for days after that incident.”

“She was a very good neighbor and recently she shared the corn she had harvested with me.”

Police are treating the death as murder, with her ex-partner named by police as the prime suspect. Local officials said the pair had been in dispute over the small plot of land where Ms Cheptegei lived, and the case had yet to be resolved.

Once he is released from hospital, he will appear in court, where he will continue to recover from the injuries he sustained during the incident.

“We have opened a file, the investigation is at an advanced stage,” Kennedy Apindi, head of criminal investigations, told the BBC.

Mrs Cheptegei’s mother, Agnes, said her daughter “was always obedient as a child, and very kind and cheerful all her life”.

Emmanual Kimutai, a friend and neighbour who went to school with Ms Cheptegei, described her as a “very exciting” and “determined” person.

“She did very well in athletics in primary school, she was our champion,” said Mr Kimutai.

The Olympic athlete was born on the Kenyan side of the Kenya-Uganda border, but decided to cross the border and go to Uganda to pursue her athletics dream when her breakthrough in Kenya failed to materialise.

Having taken up athletics, she joined the Uganda People’s Defence Forces in 2008 and rose to the rank of sergeant. Her career included competing in the Paris Olympics that year. Although she finished 44th in the marathon, people in her home region called her “champion”.

She lived in Chepkum, a village in Kenya about 25 km (15 miles) from the border with Uganda, in a rural area whose main economic activity is agriculture. Residents also keep livestock, and it is common to see cows, goats and sheep grazing outside homes. The wider area, called Trans-Nzoia County, is known as Kenya’s largest producer of maize, the main ingredient in the country’s staple diet.

Locals at a shopping mall near her home spoke fondly of a woman they sometimes waved to as she trained along the roadside, when she wasn’t competing or training in Uganda. Kind and humble were the words people often used there.

Although she was celebrated as an athlete, her private life was in turmoil. Her former classmate said her performance at the Olympics was due to the fact that she had no “peace” because of the conflict with her ex-partner that began last year.

“They were living together, but last year they started breaking up because of money,” her brother Jacob recalled. “He asked my sister, ‘What are you doing with all the money you make?’

Police told the BBC that the pair had previously reported domestic violence to several stations, but had withdrawn the report.

As Mrs Cheptegei’s family awaits justice, they continue to prepare for her final journey. She will be buried on September 14 at their family home in Bukwo, Uganda.

The Ugandan is the third athlete to be murdered in Kenya in the past three years, where intimate partners have been named by police as prime suspects. Athlete-led gender violence activist group Tirop’s Angels said the trend must stop.

“It is heartbreaking that her children witnessed their mother being attacked,” said Joan Chelimo, co-founder of Tirop’s Angels, as she fought back tears.

“This violence against athletes must stop.”