‘Missing’ Sierra Leonean athlete begging on the streets of London

Jimmy Thoronka, Sierra Leone’s best 100m sprint athlete at the 2014 commonwealth games in Glasgow, Scotland, who absconded after games, has been found begging in London.

According to UK Guardian, Thoronka now lives jobless and homeless in London, sleeping in parks, buses and bus stations, begging for N300 (£1) “from passers-by to buy chips”.

Left with few clothing, the 20-year-old washes his clothes in public toilets and dries them on lawns in the surrounding parks.

Describing what happened to him, Thoronka said he lost his passport and money, and was afraid to report to the police, so he had to beg his way to London.

“I wanted to go to London for a while after the Games but my bag with my money and passport in it was stolen at Glasgow station,” he said.

“I was scared to go to the police in case they arrested me and put me in a cell, so I begged someone at the station to pay my fare to London and they agreed to do that.”

He found his way to Leicester, where he stayed with an acquaintance who later told him he had to leave, saying that he and his wife needed their privacy.

During the games, Thoronka lost his foster father (who adopted him after the death of his biological parents during the civil war in Sierra Leone) to the deadly Ebola Virus Disease (EVD).

After the games, he lost his entire foster family to the same disease that has claimed over 3500 lives in the West African country.

With just a phone, an old toothbrush, a spare pair of underpants and trousers, and a packet of paracetamol as his only possession, Thoronka is not ready to return to Sierra Leone.

“I’m very frightened of what will happen to me. Life here is very bad for me but if I return to Sierra Leone I don’t think I will make it,” he lamented.

“I can’t go back to Sierra Leone because my whole family has been wiped out and I can’t make it alone. Nobody is doing athletics there now. Ebola has destroyed so much.

“But I can’t survive here either if I continue living like this. I don’t know what I am going to do.”

Before the games, Thoronka completed 100m in 10.58 seconds, just a second behind his role model and world record holder, Usain Bolt, who completes the same in 9.58 seconds.

Thoronka, whose visa expired in September 2014, absconded alongside Moses Sesay, a cyclist, Samuel Morris, a tennis player, and others.

Unisa Deen Kargbo, Sierra Leone’s chef de mission, said he planned to get the athletes back home as scheduled on August 5, 2014, but Thoronka said there were problems with getting flights back to Sierra Leone because of Ebola.

Thoronka won Sportswriters of Sierra Leone’s Best Male Athlete Award in 2013 and became the first athlete in Sierra Leonean history to carry the Queen’s baton in the run-up to the Commonwealth Games.