The Kenyan Olympic marathon champion, Samuel Wanjiru, was killed when he jumped off the balcony of his home late on Sunday, police have said this morning. Wanjiru appeared to have suffered internal injuries after the fall and was confirmed dead by doctors at a nearby hospital.

Wanjiru was the first Kenyan to win the Olympic gold in the marathon at Beijing in 2008 and police were now trying to ascertain if he had deliberately killed himself by jumping off the balcony.

Regional police chief, Jaspher Ombati, explained to Reuters:

I can confirm that Wanjiru is dead. It is not yet clear whether it was a suicide or if he jumped out of rage, or what caused him to fall to the ground.

He jumped from his first floor balcony to the ground. He was bleeding from the nose and the mouth, and may have suffered internal injuries.

The 24 year old Wanjiru jumped from the balcony at his home in Nyahururu, which is a town in the Rift Valley, approximately 150km northwest of the country’s capital Nairobi.

Police stated that they were also investigating a possible love triangle the former Chicago and London marathon winner may have been involved in.

Ombati continued that the athlete’s wife, Triza Njeri, had come home to find Wanjiru in bed with another woman and then proceeded to lock the couple in the bedroom before running outside.

That was when Wanjiru leapt from the balcony according to the reports.

No stranger to controversy, Wanjiru was charged in court last December with threatening to kill Njeri as well as with the illegal possession of an AK-47.

Charges were later dropped after Njeri stated the couple had reconciled. Wanjiru also suffered minor injuries when he swerved to avoid an oncoming truck, hit a pot hole and rolled his car and crashed in January this year.

He’d spent his high school years in Japan after winning a Kenyan cross country selection trial back in 2002 and still holds the Olympic marathon world record of 2:06:32 for the emphatic win in Beijing.

[Source: HuffingtonPost]