5 Sep 2024

Uganda Olympic runner’s horrific death is the latest in violence against female athletes in Kenya

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By GERALD IMRAY

Olympic runner Rebecca Cheptegei’s horrific death after being doused with petrol and set on fire by her boyfriend has again brought to the fore Kenya’s harrowing history of domestic violence against female athletes.

Her killing follows the deaths of at least two other high-profile female runners in cases of domestic violence in the last three years in a region that has produced dozens of Olympic and world champions.

What happened to Cheptegei?

Cheptegei, who was from Uganda, died on Thursday at age 33. Police say Cheptegei’s boyfriend poured a can of petrol over her and set her on fire during a dispute on Sunday. She suffered 80% burns on her body and died in a hospital in the town of Eldoret four days later.

The boyfriend was also burned in the attack and is being treated at the same hospital. No criminal charges have yet been announced against him.

Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month ago, finishing in 44th place. She lived in western Kenya’s famous high-altitude training region that draws the best distance runners from across the world and had recently built a house there to be close to the training centers.

Agnes Tirop

The brutal slaying of Kenyan star runner Tirop in the same region in 2021 led to an outpouring of anger from fellow athletes and prompted the East African country’s athletics authorities to acknowledge the scourge of domestic abuse as a major problem.

Tirop was one of Kenya’s brightest talents when she was stabbed to death at her home in Iten, the other world-renowned distance-running training town in Kenya, alongside Eldoret. Her husband, who was on the run, was arrested days after the killing and has been charged with murder. His court case is still underway.

Like Cheptegei, the 25-year-old Tirop had just competed at an Olympics — the 2021 Tokyo Games — and had set a new world record in the 10-kilometer road race in another competition a month before she was killed. Her body was found with stab wounds to the stomach and neck, as well as blunt trauma injury to her head.

In the weeks after Tirop’s death, current and former male and female athletes, spoke out over what they said was a long-running problem of domestic abuse against female athletes in the region. Some marched through the streets of Iten to demand better protection for female athletes and stricter laws against abusers.

Other Kenyan athletes like Ruth Bosibori, a former African champion in the steeplechase, and Joan Chelimo, a marathon runner, said Tirop’s killing had emboldened them to talk about their own abusive relationships.

Both said they had escaped violent partners that made them fear for their lives.

Damaris Muthee

Just six months after Tirop, another runner was killed. Kenyan-born Muthee, who competed for Bahrain, was found dead in a house in Iten after being strangled. Her decomposing body had been there for days before it was found, authorities said at the time.

A male Ethiopian runner with whom she was in a relationship was charged with murder. Muthee, who was 28, had a young child from another relationship.

The cases of domestic abuse in Kenya’s running community are set against the country’s overriding high rates of violence against women, which has prompted marches by ordinary citizens in towns and cities this year.

Activists say successful female athletes may be especially vulnerable in instances when their partners want to control their money and assets in an impoverished region and the women refuse and push back.

Police said Cheptegei was killed in a dispute with her boyfriend over the land she had just built a house on.

Samuel Wanjiru

One of Kenya’s best male athletes also died in what authorities said was a domestic dispute in 2011. Wanjiru was 24 and at the time the reigning Olympic marathon champion. He fell to his death from a balcony at his home during an argument with his wife.

He had been arrested a year earlier and questioned by police for allegedly threatening to kill his wife with an assault rifle. He denied the allegations.

Although Kenyan authorities ruled Wanjiru died after falling or jumping from the balcony, his family claimed that he was killed.

___

AP Africa news: https://apnews.com/hub/africa

5 Sep 2024

Prominent Minnesota attorney sentenced for striking I-35 worker

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PINE CITY — It’s understandable that the general public may assume a prominent lawyer would catch a break when appearing in court on criminal charges, a judge and prosecutor said Wednesday.

But attorneys handling the case against James Patrick Carey wanted to make it clear he wasn’t getting a mere “slap on the wrist” for drunkenly striking a highway construction worker last fall.

“I explained to (the victim) that that certainly wasn’t the way our office would treat Mr. Carey,” Pine County prosecutor Kelli Jasper said, “but that we also wouldn’t treat him more harshly because of the employment that he has. We would treat him like we would any other person in the same factual situation.”

Carey, 64, the head of one of Minnesota’s oldest and largest personal injury law firms, will avoid further jail time if he successfully completes four years of supervised probation under the sentence handed down by Judge Krista Martin.

The president and managing partner of SiebenCarey pleaded guilty in June to a gross misdemeanor count of criminal vehicular operation resulting in bodily harm, admitting he was under the influence of alcohol when he clipped the worker on Interstate 35 near Hinckley.

James Patrick Carey. (Courtesy of the Pine County Sheriff’s Office)

Court documents said the victim, Joseph Gregory Flanagan, 27, of Duluth, was wearing a high-visibility vest and walking on a dirt shoulder when he was hit by Carey’s 2016 GMC Acadia around 11:40 a.m. Oct. 6.

Carey continued north without stopping, but was eventually located by Carlton County Sheriff’s Office deputies about 35 miles north near Moose Lake, his vehicle missing its passenger side mirror.

Carey, of Edina, Minnesota, reportedly smelled of alcohol and had bloodshot, watery eyes. A preliminary breath test placed his blood-alcohol concentration at 0.143, in excess of the 0.08 legal limit, according to a criminal complaint.

Flanagan, meanwhile, was transported to Essentia Health-Sandstone, where he was treated for injuries, including “severe bruising and swelling on his arm where he had been hit.”

Under the terms of a plea agreement, additional gross misdemeanor counts of criminal vehicular operation and failure to stop for a traffic collision, as well as a misdemeanor impaired driving charge, were dismissed.

Jasper said Flanagan was initially “extremely upset” and insisted that any plea agreement include Carey serving jail time beyond the four days he already spent in custody.

But the county attorney’s office later agreed to the deal, she said, because Carey “voluntarily availed himself of multiple treatment opportunities, and has really gone above and beyond what we would normally see a defendant do at this point.”

Flanagan ultimately did not object to the outcome, Jasper said. He did not attend Wednesday’s sentencing, nor did he submit a victim-impact statement or request restitution. But he has retained a civil attorney, the prosecutor said.

Defense attorney Tom Sieben, brother of the defendant’s law partner, said he has known Carey for 40 years and said he has seen a “huge, huge change” since the incident. A Biwabik native, Carey is a fourth-generation attorney and the son of a longtime state judge.

“He’s doing really wonderful with his recovery,” Sieben said. “I know his wife; I know his children. I know they are all extremely proud of the change that he’s made in the last year. It’s a big deal to jump in and admit that you have a problem and do what it takes to keep that sobriety going.”

Sieben said the Minnesota Department of Motor Vehicles is expected to impose a two-year loss of license and a requirement that Carey install an ignition interlock.

He has already penned a letter of apology to the victim, as prescribed by the plea agreement, and will perform 80 hours of community service at a children’s hospice organization.

“I’m very sincerely sorry to Mr. Flanagan and his family for the trouble and pain that I have caused them,” Carey told the court. “Rarely does a day go by where I don’t think about it. I was in a really bad, unhealthy place. I think I’m in a better place now.”

In lieu of a 364-day jail term, Carey must also comply with all recommendations of a treatment assessment, abstain from alcohol and non-prescribed drug use and submit to testing at the discretion of his probation officer.

Judge Martin said she hoped the sentence would show that the system does not “favor those folks with money or power.” She said Carey, due to his prominence in the legal community, has likely faced more scrutiny than an ordinary person would in his situation.

“You haven’t been strident and you haven’t been arrogant and you haven’t been difficult,” Martin told him. “In fact, you have been humble and you have taken responsibility and you have done what’s necessary to work on your issues. I think that is a really good sign.”

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5 Sep 2024

Carl P. Leubsdorf: They’re all ‘flip-floppers’

by | posted in: Politics | 0

When Kamala Harris first sought the presidency in 2019, she ‘leaned left, backing Medicare for all, urging a ban on the oil recovery process known as fracking, praising the “defund the police” movement.

But as the newly minted Democratic presidential nominee, she is pursuing a more centrist course and has abandoned those more ideological stances. She even backs a border bill that funds Donald Trump’s wall.

The changes have prompted Trump to assail her as “the greatest flip-flopper in history,” though Trump too may merit that moniker.

After all, when he re-registered in 2012 as a Republican, it marked the fifth time he had changed his party affiliation in 25 years.

And according to a 2016 NBC News study, Trump made “141 distinct shifts on 23 major issues.” Most notably, he went from being an abortion rights supporter to the fervent foe whose Supreme Court nominees helped overturn those rights to lately disdaining a national abortion ban.

In accepting Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s endorsement, Trump hailed him as “an incredible champion for so many of these values that we all share,” though earlier he called him “one of the most liberal lunatics ever to run for office.”

Candidates often adapt past positions to suit present realities, and it’s standard practice for their rivals to assail those changes. It’s easy to see why voters get confused.

The fact is no presidential candidate is consistent on everything. And in most cases, their current positions are more significant than their past ones, because they more closely signal their presidential intentions. Still, inconsistency remains a legitimate debate and ad target.

And while there is no guarantee a victorious candidate will maintain every campaign position, most by and large pursue the policies they promise. Post-election reversals can create the kind of political trouble the first President George Bush encountered in abandoning his campaign pledge to oppose all tax increases.

In recent years, congressional Republicans have often taken “all or nothing” positions, reflecting polls showing Republicans far less amenable to compromise than Democrats. And so too did Trump, to a greater extent than other recent presidents.

A classic example was when he was offered an immigration compromise in 2019 that funded the wall he was extending on the country’s Southern border if he’d accept legal status for hundreds of thousands of “dreamers,” young people brought illegally to the United States as small children.

In the morning, he signaled his openness to the deal. After lunch, he reversed himself, presumably after pressure from his most fervent anti-immigration adviser, Stephen Miller.

And though Trump consistently called for the badly needed infrastructure upgrade that President Joe Biden and the Democrats ultimately enacted, he rejected the compromises the Democrats wanted, saying he wouldn’t work with them while they were investigating his administration.

Trump’s attitude represented a sharp change from the practice of Ronald Reagan, who was a far more pragmatic president than his more ideological campaigns suggested. “I’d rather get 80 percent of what I want than go over the cliff with my flags flying,” said Reagan, who acquiesced in tax increases he opposed to get the promises of spending cuts he sought.

Unlike Trump, Biden worked with a bipartisan Senate coalition to achieve a compromise infrastructure bill. Harris, who was part of that and other negotiations, shows every sign of being similarly pragmatic, as she has in adapting past positions in her current campaign.

When she first sought the presidency in 2019, the early Democratic debate was dominated by liberal Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. Both backed Sanders’ plan to extend Medicare to provide health insurance for all Americans, a proposal notably opposed by Biden.

Seeking to compete with them, Harris proposed a combination that adopted the Sanders plan of government health insurance for all but kept a role for private insurers. Though a potentially palatable compromise, it was something she had great difficulty in explaining, and her candidacy never gained traction. An aide said recently it’s something she no longer favors.

The same is true with fracking, an important issue in pivotal Pennsylvania, and defunding the police. Her campaign says Harris has always favored funding the police, though CNN reported she said in a 2020 radio interview that the “defund the police” movement “is about rightly saying, we need to take a look at these budgets and figure out whether it reflects the right priorities.”

It’s a safe bet Trump will raise these issues in their Sept. 10 debate, assuming it takes place, as he has on the campaign trail. But there’s no sign yet that his contentions of flip-flopping have dented Harris’ momentum, though some interviews with undecided voters showed a desire for more specificity.

Abrupt policy changes reflecting campaign pressures are tricky politically and potentially counterproductive. A classic case occurred in 1968, after the Democrats’ tumultuous nominating convention.

Seeking to attract votes from the supporters of his two antiwar opponents, presidential nominee Hubert Humphrey abandoned his all-out support of U.S. involvement in Vietnam and urged a bombing halt.

It helped him close the gap against Republican rival Richard Nixon, but it angered President Lyndon Johnson, who tacitly favored Nixon and did little to help Humphrey. On Election Day, Humphrey narrowly fell short.

There’s a reason most candidates prefer to provide generalities to indicate their general ideological thrust, rather than specifics opponents can compare with their prior stances.

Carl P. Leubsdorf is the former Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News. His email address is carl.p.leubsdorf@gmail.com

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5 Sep 2024

John Thomas: Do high school coaches really change the world? For so many of us, Mike Foley did

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There has been some talk recently about coaches in high school sports. And this weekend St. Paul Academy and Summit School’s (SPA) new Athletics Hall of Fame will induct one of the greatest to ever do it anywhere. So, it seems right to share with the world the extraordinary gift to so many that was the late Coach Mike Foley.

West Siders in St. Paul from the 1960s will remember him as the kid from Baker Playground whose leadership earned him a scholarship to the rarefied air of Colgate University.

Minnesota high school hockey fans were enthralled by his sublime 31-1 1973 juggernaut and 1974 Independent State Champions at SPA.

Gopher fans from the 1970s and ’80s recall his low-profile and invaluable supporting role on the bench for Herbie and then with Brad Buetow, including an NCAA National Championship team in 1979.

Thousands more learned from him in his Shakespeare classroom and his exceptional summer hockey school.

Mike Foley felt a humble pride in having grown up in a working-class neighborhood in a blue-collar city. He carried that work ethic, humility and integrity over to his teaching and coaching. He was as at home with the engineers in the school’s boiler room as he was quoting Shakespeare in teaching the meaning of life. Late into countless nights, stacks of students’ papers could routinely be found in his tiny den at home as he read and marked up each with instructive feedback; always teaching. He was often seen sprinting up and down the ice with his players during his infamous “hurt, pain, agony” drills as they worked tirelessly to be the best-conditioned teams in the state. At a time when summer hockey schools were proliferating with the star power of big-name athletes who made episodic appearances, Mike Foley committed to leading the coaching work personally in each and every session.

In any discussion with or about Coach Foley and in sharing our memories of him, we hear two themes clearly: Love and Learning.
In the classroom and the rink, Coach made us hungry for learning — about hockey, Shakespeare and most of all, life.

Why?

Because he loved us. We were all so different. And he was different, too. And he loved all of us.

How did we know that? You know how you can just feel it sometimes? It’s in how someone speaks to you — he called us all by our full names. Every time. He never cursed. Ever. And he didn’t yell at us like all the other coaches did at the time.

And then there were times like the day Mike Dosdall and Joth Lindeke collided at top speed during practice. They both went down hard and Joth started convulsing violently. While the rest of us all stood paralyzed, Coach was shot out of a cannon from across the rink. He hit the ice and reached into Joth’s mouth to pull up his tongue, quite possibly saving his life. Still on his knees, Coach checked on Dos, who was dazed but OK, and then cradled Joth like a baby in his arms until the ambulance arrived. It was a profound act of love.

We learned from Coach that love opens both our hearts and our minds. When we feel safe, we listen more and hear differently. We ask more questions. Coach used the Socratic method — always asking. Opening our young minds to the boundless possibilities he saw in and for us. We were too young to really believe in ourselves yet. He saw the worlds of potential in all of us. And he helped us begin to see it for ourselves.

As a result, we learned from Coach to love each other and see the best in each other. All of that lives on in us to this day.

Coach always had a purpose, and he shared that with us. It was his way of helping us learn the importance of purpose and values — in hockey and in life … Preparation. Sacrifice. Selflessness. Humility. Teamwork. On and off the ice. Gratitude. So often he would say when he heard a story of misfortune, “There but for the Grace of God. That could be you or me.”

One of Coach’s many go-to sayings — “Life is 200 by 85, boys” — the rink measurements. He used the game to teach us about life.

Coach would often tell us, “These are the best years of your lives, boys. Enjoy them while you’ve got them. It won’t be long … Things get complicated.” Then he and his beloved wife invited us into their home for their world-famous, season-end taco parties. The love in their family was palpable when we hit the door. We saw that he was living his very best life ~ and we learned again from his example.

A young leader at one of the world’s most popular media companies heard the news about Coach Foley’s passing last fall. Her first words were about how she had just recently been sharing with her own team, scattered all over the planet, what she learned from Coach Foley through her own father — “Do your best; be your best in every situation. And let God take care of the rest.” She said she felt so thankful for the gifts of time and learning she received with Coach Foley.

On behalf of the hundreds and thousands of souls you touched and the lives you made infinitely better … Thank you, Coach. Thank you, all of the extraordinary Foley family.

John Thomas, Sacramento, grew up in St. Paul and was the student manager for Coach Foley’s 1969-70 SPA hockey team. Thomas later served in business leadership roles with the Timberwolves NBA expansion franchise and the NHL Stanley Cup Finalist North Stars as well as the back-to-back NBA Champion Houston Rockets, inaugural WNBA Champion Houston Comets, the WNBA Champion Sacramento Monarchs and the Sacramento Kings.

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