On the evening of the stabbing incident, TOC spoke to residents from David Widjaja’s hall and colleagues of Associate Professor Chan Kap Luk, who was alleged to be the victim. We will continue to provide timely updates on this story
Updates (4 March 2009): According to a Singapore Police Force press release, investigations are still ongoing. It is not known who is the aggressor. A spokesman for the SPF declined to reveal any more information about the alleged assault, at least not until investigations are complete.
Story by Terence Lee and Darren Boon
A final year NTU student allegedly stabbed a professor before falling off to his death from the linkway between two blocks on Monday morning.
It is believed that David Hartanto Widjaja, 21, from the Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE) school, stabbed Associate Professor(A/P) Chan Kap Luk, 45, from the same faculty. The incident happened at Block S1A at about 10.35am in the morning.
David Widjaja was pronounced dead on the spot while Prof Chan is receiving medical attention at the National University Hospital and is said to be recovering well.
According to a Singapore Police Force press release, investigations are still ongoing. It is not known who is the aggressor. A spokesman for the SPF declined to reveal any more information about the alleged assault, at least not until investigations are complete.
Prof Chan “pleasant, nice and knowledgeable”
There is no official word on the motive of the stabbing. However, A/P Chan was the supervisor for Mr Widjaja’s final year project titled ‘Multiview acquisition from Multi-camera configuration for person adaptive 3D display’.
Mr Widjaja had been a President of the NTU Electronic Sports Club.
In the profile listed by the university, Prof Chan obtained his PhD in Robot Vision from Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of London, London, United Kingdom in 1991.
TOC spoke to a colleague of A/P Chan, Professor Ma Kai-Kuang, a fellow lecturer in the EE 4490 Multimedia Systems course. He described Prof Chan as having a “good reputation, and pleasant, nice and knowledgeable”.
Deceased was “carefree” but kept to himself in hall
24-year-old Arts student Joel Tan stays in the same NTU Hall just three rooms away from David. He was not aware that David stayed on the same floor as him, until two MyPaper reporters came by to ask him about the occupant of the room three doors down.
“I knew a couple of my neighbours, but not him. He probably to kept to himself a lot,” he said.
While most rooms in NTU are shared by two people, the rooms on David’s floor only had single beds, so he did not have a roommate.
On the night of the incident, TOC approached four students who lived on the same floor as David, but none of them had met him before.
According to a blog by Muhammad Taureza, who spoke to one of David’s friends, Widjaja was known to his friends as “Ming Ming”. He noted that Widjaja ‘has been known as a carefree student by some of his peers’, and an avid player of World of Warcraft.
In Taureza’s blog, one of his friends observed a slight change in Widjaja a week before the stabbing when he ceased contacting his friends, though Taureza’s friend didn’t go into details.
David’s body has been identified by his parents, who had flown in from Indonesia.
Read also: Breaking News: Prof stabbed, student dies at NTU
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Picture from the Straits Times.
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KL,
The NTU website is fine. It can be accessed:
http://www.ntu.edu.sg/Pages/default.aspx
Ok, thanks..
I can access through my handphone, but cannot through my IBM or Mac.. T_T
Latest news, there has been correction on the news by Singapore side. It is said now that David did not commit suicide. Haven’t got time to check further.
THANKS, EDITORS
Thanks, editor, for the feedback. My last comment was much less than 1000 words—873 to be exact, not the thousands you mentioned. Now that you have clarified the word limit to work on, I will try to work within this limit. If not will have to split up the post, as what I did for foreign web-forums.
But for abstracts that I had pasted to respond to others posts, I am following the practice of foreign web-forums to display the context that I am writing & responding. So sorry.
OK. I will use their post numbers for reference so I can cut down the length of my overall post, and keep abstracts of their posts in my personal file for my record purposes.
For your info, after maybe another two weeks or so, I will be taking a long break to devote my time for other things. I don’t think I want to over-do my civic duties. It is an endless and a thankless job. Can be stressful, as I notice it has been for all of you administering it too.
Thanks for the privilege of sharing my thoughts in your TOC blog, editors!
{“theonlinecitizen” wrote on March 6th, 2009 3.36 pm: Oh Tham Eng,
Please do not post comments which run into the thousands of words. Your last comment was more than 1,000 word long. It will not be allowed. Also, do not cut and paste entire articles from elsewhere. They too run into more than a thousand words.
Try and keep your comments to below 500 words.}
It’s been a tragic week.
Firstly the NTU stabbing incident.
Secondly the NUS incident whereby the guy suddenly collapsed and died.
And then this 27 year old Doctor who is with the Army is found dead in Melbourne, Victoria.
wow…i wonder if the prof is gay?
really…there can’t just that he do not get the grade…
http://justlimz.blogspot.com/2009/03/david-case-high-profile-crime-not.html
To those who are yapping about “computer addiction”, kindly shut your trap. You people don’t know many things about the online world.
Sure, there are horror stories about online addictions out there. But there are also many good untold stories. Why untold? Because “nice” news don’t sell newspapers. The media did not even get the game that’s he’s playing right. They just assumed that he’s a WoW player.
This person who passed away happened to be well-loved by his community.
He was kind, helpful, respected, and very popular.
See here:
http://destiny.enjoymmo.com/forum/viewthread.php?tid=2882&extra=page%3D1&page=1
Please stop assuming that someone is wrong, or that there is only one single factor that caused this. The news reports don’t seem to tally with some of the accounts given by witnesses and friends of David and the prof, so let’s wait to see what comes up before judging.
Heart felt condolense to the late Mr.David’s family and friend.
As i follow up on the news updates ,I do feel somwhat “fishy”.
The news has been made “sensational”.
I really hope late Mr.David will get justice after his time.
of course there’s wrong with the statement..
Because the one who’s the bad guy is the profesor. He’s the one who killed the poor student..
What I can say is that money and glory can make people blind..
I just thought that a good school, doesnt mean a good teacher..