Sharon Jepkosgei Kigen, Kenyan student who drowned in Australia to be laid to rest today

Sharon Jepkosgei Kigen, the Kenyan student who drowned while swimming in Australia will be laid to rest today (Tuesday, March 14).

Sharon - who met her untimely death on February 21 - will be buried at her parents home in Moiben Constituency, Uasin Gishu County, a day after her body arrived in Kenya.

The plane carrying Sharon's remains touched down at the Eldoret International Airport on Monday, March 13 a few minutes past 7 am. Family members could not hold back their tears as they viewed her body.

What happened?

Sharon was swimming at Simmo's Beach, near Macquarie Fields in Sydney when the accident occurred.

Reports indicate that emergency services were called to rescue her after she failed to resurface when swimming at about 3:45pm local time.

“Officers from The Traffic and Highway Patrol entered the water along with members of the public and commenced to search the water where the woman was located and brought to the shoreline,” New South Wales (NSW) Police said in a statement.

NSW Ambulance paramedics tried performing Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on the student but she could not be revived.

Had just arrived in Australia

She was a student of Australian Catholic University-North Sydney. She had just arrived in the Oceania country for her studies in November 2022.

Her course in Information Technology (IT) was supposed to commence on February 23.

Her family and friends set up a GoFundMe page for well-wishers to contribute money (they were targeting to raise KSh2.5 million) to enable her body repatriated to Kenya. KSh1.7 million was raised.