The mental state of Jeroen Ensink’s schizophrenic knife killer was not recorded in police custody paperwork, an inquest heard today.
Timchang “Femi” Nandap smiled as he chased and stabbed the 41-year-old, a total stranger, to death outside his home in Hilldrop Crescent, Holloway.
Nandap suffered paranoid schizophrenia and his Old Bailey court case heard how voices in his head told him to kill Jeroen, who had popped out to post cards announcing the birth of his daughter 11 days earlier.
Nandap was sentenced to an indefinite period in a mental health hospital in October 2016.
An inquest has now opened at St Pancras Coroner’s Court to establish what caused Jeroen’s death. And early evidence has focused on a police incident with Nandap in May 2015.
In a Belsize Park residential street, Nandap had brandished a large knife and shimmied up a drainpipe to sit on a balcony. He fought police until a Taser was drawn.
With Jeroen’s widow Nadja watching, Pc Stephen McDonagh, who made the arrest, told the court this morning: “The information we received, I wouldn’t have described as the actions of a normal person.”
But the court heard there was “nothing recorded” on his custody record about Nandap’s “mental health crisis”.
In an interview with officers at Islington police station after his arrest, the court heard Nandap had said: “I do random things, like spy manoeuvres. I am kind of a funny guy like that.”
The Crown Prosecution Service dropped the case against London School of Economics student Nandap six days before he killed Jeroen, a London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine lecturer.
Nandap’s sister, Wupya, was also called to give evidence. She told the court he was “not normal” in the first few months of 2015.
“It was things like his personal hygiene,” she said. “He was spending a lot of time indoors on his laptop. He talked a lot about conspiracy theories. He always seemed to have a vacant expression on his face.
“I asked if he wanted to see a doctor. I also asked him to stop smoking cannabis because I thought that was part of the problem. I told him to go to class instead.”
Asked if her brother had ever seemed violent, Wupya said: “No.”
The inquest continues.
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