

Sierra Leone’s top sprinter, who vanished after the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow last summer, has been arrested after he was found in an emaciated state, living rough on the streets of London.



Jimmy Thoronka, 20, his country’s number one 100m sprinter, and tipped by some for a big sporting career, disappeared at the end of the Games last August. Along with several other athletes he failed to return to Sierra Leone, and until now his whereabouts had been unclear.

At approximately 7pm on Friday Jimmy Thoronka was arrested for overstaying his visa. He was taken to Walworth police station in Elephant & Castle. A police spokesman said: “He will be held here overnight and processed by immigration tomorrow morning.”

Since this article was first published, hundreds of people have been in touch to offer support, and a petition has been set up on change.org to support him. A new Gofundme campaign for Jimmy has also been started in the US.

Speaking to the Guardian before he was detained, he described what has happened to him since he vanished.

Thoronka also revealed his feelings at discovering the devastation Ebola has wreaked on his family back home, who had adopted him after the death of his birth parents. “I was very excited to be coming to the Games in Glasgow,” he said.

“I saw it as my big chance. I had competed in international competitions before, in Singapore and the Isle of Man, but this was the big one for me.” When he and his team mates left Sierra Leone for Glasgow, some Ebola cases had been confirmed in a few of the villages surrounding Freetown, but the epidemic had not yet taken hold of the capital. The death toll in the country is now more than 3,500 cases.



Thoronka said: “I was hoping to win a medal for my country. But during the Games I got the terrible news that my uncle had died, probably from Ebola. I couldn’t stop crying. It was difficult to continue with competing but I tried to carry on.” Thoronka competed in one 4x100m relay at the games, but failed to win any medals. He was running times of 10.58 seconds for the 100m sprint before the competition.

Jimmy Thoronka, now living rough on the streets of London. Photograph: Graeme Robertson

Today, Thoronka washes his set of spare clothes in the public toilets and then spreads them out on the grass in the park to dry. He is not working illegally, nor claiming benefits or housing. He understands the legal implications of remaining in the UK after his visa has expired but said that his situation is hopeless.

The president of the Sierra Leone Athletics Association, Abdul Karim Sesay, said Thoronka had the potential to be one of the fastest sprinters in the world. He said: “He is not only a brilliant sprinter, a natural athlete and extremely fast, he is also very disciplined and focused and willing to listen carefully to his trainers so that he can improve his performance. He wants to be the best sprinter in the world and I believe with the right training and conditions he could make it.”

Since theguardian.com published his story, offers to help Thoronka have flooded in, from across the UK, Ireland and the United States. Richard Dent, a Cambridge University student doing a PhD in how social networking can help those in poverty or crisis has set up a gofundme page which has raised more than £1,600.

Thoronka described what happened after the games. “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. 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.” The athlete then managed to make contact with an acquaintance who initially agreed that he could stay with him and his wife in Leicester.

There, while watching an African TV channel, he heard the news that his mother, Jelikatu Kargbo, a nurse in the police service, had also died of Ebola. He later discovered that his entire immediate family – including his three adopted sisters and brother – had been killed by the virus.

After a while the acquaintance in Leicester asked him to leave, saying that he and his wife needed their privacy. Distraught and unsure what to do, he said he drifted down to London and began sleeping in parks and on night buses and begging for £1 from passers-by to buy chips. “Some days I get no food at all. I wash in public toilets and sleep in the park,” he said.

“I wake up around 4am and if I’ve got a bus pass I get on the night bus and sleep there until morning. I met a man who sometimes lets me sleep at his house but I have to wait outside for him to come home at 10 or 11pm and I get very cold.

“We have a cold season in Sierra Leone but it is not cold like England. Some days I don’t think I’m going to make it and just feel like killing myself. My dream is to become one of the best sprinters in the world but I don’t see how that can happen now. Maybe someone will see that I have potential and give me some sponsorship so that I can train here.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Thoronka was the first athlete in Sierra Leone to carry the Queen’s baton in the run up to the games Photograph: Supplied

If he returns to Sierra Leone he is not expected to receive any training as he has become a “young adult orphan” and because of the Ebola crisis there is great uncertainty about whether or not he will be able to continue his sprinting career. Meanwhile in the UK he is barely surviving. “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.”



In a small black rucksack he carries all his possessions: a phone, an old toothbrush, a spare pair of underpants and trousers, and a packet of paracetamol, purchased in a pound shop, to stave off the aches and pains that come from living on the streets. “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,” he said.

Second tragedy

Sierra Leone has endured two tragedies in the past two decades – first the civil war from 1991 until 2002, in which an estimated 50,000 people died and then the Ebola crisis. Thoronka says he has lost two families in his young life – the first family during the war and his second family as a result of Ebola. He became separated from his birth parents when he was five.

They were killed in the war and he was placed in a war child camp. He said he was then adopted by Kargbo, a woman he said was kind and devoted to him, and he enjoyed a happy and loving childhood with this new family. “This lady brought me into her home, she took me as her son and I took her as my mother.”

He was brought up in the village of Gbendenbu, west of Freetown, and began taking part in 50m sprints at primary school and then inter-school competitions. Kargbo encouraged him to study hard so that he could become a doctor or a lawyer but sprinting was always his first love and eventually she agreed to let him follow his heart. “At first my mother did not want me to be a sprinter so I used to creep out of the house late and night and practise my running at a running track.”

He showed talent and commitment and had become his country’s top sprinter by the time he travelled to the Commonwealth Games. He won medals in African competitions and received the Sports Writers of Sierra Leone’s best male athlete award in 2013. He was the first athlete in Sierra Leone to carry the Queen’s baton in the runup to the Games.

Thoronka is finding it hard to come to terms with this loss of a second family. “I can’t believe that my mother and all my family – my sisters and brothers – have died from Ebola,” he said, crying and shaking his head. “This is the second time I have lost my people.”

Back in Sierra Leone, Sesay said he was happy to hear that Thoronka was still alive, albeit in difficult circumstances. “Jimmy is a brilliant sprinter and a very nice guy. Everyone loves him,” he said. “Things here in Freetown have been very difficult since Ebola struck. Many of the athletes have lost their families to the virus and I am looking after 10 of them at my house. It is a very difficult time.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Thoronka: ‘a brilliant sprinter, a natural athlete and extremely fast.’ Photograph: Supplied

“The picture here is very bleak,” he added. “They issue an Ebola certificate here to confirm that that is what people have died from. They have issued the certificate for Jimmy’s family and I am going to pick it up. The Ebola was very bad in Jimmy’s village and the surrounding areas. People were just dying in the streets, it was horrible.

“I am worried about the psychological impact on Jimmy of losing his family and getting no support. Things are very difficult here. Jimmy’s chances to become one of the world’s greatest sprinters would be much better if he could stay in the UK and find someone to sponsor his training.

“It is hard for any athletics at all to take place here at the moment, we are all just staying at home. The epidemic is not over. It goes down and then it comes back up again, even the vice-president was in quarantine after his bodyguard developed Ebola. We are praying it will be over soon.”

In conditions very different from those in his home country, Thoronka tries to keep up some training, when he has had enough to eat. He does exercises at a free, open air gym in a London park. “I’m trying to keep up my fitness and keep my muscles strong but I’m weak because I can’t get enough food so I only manage to do this once or twice a fortnight. I used to weigh 75kg [11st 11lb] but I weigh much less now. Back home I used to do squats with 75kg weights. I can’t do anything like that now.”



“But after everything I’ve been through I’m determined not to give up hope. During the training sessions in Glasgow I saw Usain Bolt, my hero, and asked him to pose for a photo with me. Unfortunately he said he was too busy training and I never got another opportunity to ask him. He is my hero and my ambition is to become the next Usain Bolt,” he said.

“If I had not come to the Commonwealth Games I probably would have died of Ebola along with the rest of my family. I believe I was meant to survive so I can succeed in my dream to be the best sprinter in the world.”

During the competition two of Thoronka’s team mates , cyclist Moses Sesay, 32 and table tennis player Samuel Morris, 34, had been suspected of having Ebola. Both tested negative for the virus. At the time, Thoronka was quoted in the media as saying that he wanted to extend his visa because of Ebola: “We are safe here and it’s dangerous there,” he said.

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

Many of those who have made donations left supportive messages. Andrea Feast said: This is one of the saddest stories I’ve ever read. He’s lost two families and close to all hope in such a short life.”

Several readers have offered Thoronka a spare room in their home or a place to sleep on the sofa bed in their living room. One offered board and lodging and part of his allotment to work on so that he would both be occupied and have lots of nutritious food to eat.

One person has offered to set up a network of rooms so that Thoronka has a bed to sleep in every night.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “We cannot comment on individual cases, but there is assistance available for people to return home when they are not entitled to remain in the UK.”