Change language
Actions
Displays
Remove from selection
Add to selection
Abstract

The victim of a fatal stabbing in Holloway was an eminent biologist who had become a father for the first time just 10 days before his death.

Dr Jeroen Ensink, 41, an “immensely popular” senior lecturer at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, died after he was repeatedly stabbed outside his home in Hilldrop Crescent, off Camden Road, around lunchtime last Tuesday.

The biologist, originally from the Netherlands, devoted his professional life to improving access to water and sanitation in developing countries.

Dr Ensink’s wife, Nadja Ensink-Teich, 37, had given birth to the couple’s first child, a baby girl, just days before. Friends said he was “very excited” about having become a father.

The door to the couple’s flat, where people laid flowers this week, had bunting with the words “new baby” still attached to it.

“We are all so shocked and sad,” said Walter Gibson, 63, a close friend and colleague who had carried out research with Dr Ensink in Tanzania and Vietnam. “But it’s nothing compared to what his wife is going through.

“Jeroen was in the prime of his career and it’s so sad it’s been cut short. He had a very full programme of teaching and research and he liked that combination.

“He was a wonderful person, very charming. He had a great sense of fun and a generous nature. He was a very open and positive person and was very generous with his time with everybody, particularly his students.”

Another colleague, water sanitation economist Sophie Trémolet, of Tufnell Park, said she returned from holiday to find a card announcing the birth of Dr Ensink’s daughter – only then to receive the news he had died.

Over the past week, tributes have been pouring in from friends and colleagues. Dr Ensink had been a lecturer in public health engineering at the world-leading centre for research and postgraduate education since 2008 and his career as a researcher and educator crossed many continents.

At the time of his death he was leading a large study in the Democratic Republic of Congo aimed at understanding how improvements in water supply could control and prevent cholera outbreaks.

Alix Zwane, chief executive of the Global Innovation Fund, described Dr Ensink as “very warm, unpretentious and super-smart”.

Asked what his untimely death meant for his field, she added: “It’s a real loss of expertise on how to think about creating sustainable cities in developing countries that work for poor people.”

She added: “Everyone is just incredibly shocked. It’s just so sudden and senseless and seemingly random.”

Professor Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: “Jeroen was passionately committed to a simple cause: improving access to water and sanitation in countries where children continue to die needlessly due to the lack of these basic services.”

At the request of Dr Ensink’s family, the school has established the Jeroen Ensink Memorial Fund, which will be used to support MSc scholarships for students from sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

A post-mortem examination at Whittington Hospital mortuary on Thursday gave the cause of death as multiple stab wounds.

Femi Nandap, 22, of Woolwich, south London, appeared via a prison video link at the Old Bailey on Tuesday charged with Dr Ensink’s murder.

He has been remanded in custody for a plea hearing at the same court on April 22.