A security guard randomly stabbed to death just blocks from his Bronx home was on his way to work after a monthlong, much-needed vacation to visit relatives in Ghana, his outraged family said Wednesday.
Anyone with anything to say about murder victim George Ennin homed in on the same two traits, that Ennin, 53, was devoted to his two teenage daughters and that he was as hardworking as they come.
Relatives said the timing of the broad-daylight attack made Ennin’s death that much more difficult to deal with, knowing that his reward for long-overdue time off was being savagely knifed to death on his first day back at work.
George Ennin. (Courtesy of family)
“He went away for a month on vacation,” Ennin’s grieving sister Rita Adusei said. “He went to see family in Ghana. We all travel there most of the time. He just came back from Ghana on Saturday.”
Adusei said her brother barely had time to unwind and unpack from his overseas trip before he was viciously attacked.
“He didn’t deserve that,” Adusei said about the caught-on-camera killing. “We want justice and we won’t give up. He was working so hard for his kids, he was very hardworking,”
Ennin’s accused killer, Sean Jones, 38, was charged with murder, manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon after his arrest a day later just hours after police released surveillance images of the suspect and requested the public’s help tracking him down.
Police released surveillance images of a man they said stabbed a 53-year-old man in the Bronx. (NYPD)
Surveillance video captured Ennin’s attacker tripping the security guard in front of a Melrose pizza shop Monday afternoon before plunging a knife into Ennin as he lay on the ground.
Medics rushed Ennin, who was about three blocks from home when he was attacked, to Lincoln Hospital, where he died a short time later.
A police spokeswoman said Jones had been arrested roughly 20 times between 2013 and 2019 on charges including criminal possession of a weapon and criminal trespass.
In 2020, Jones pleaded guilty to robbery, assault, grand larceny and harassment charges for viciously attacking and robbing two women in the Bronx.
On March 10, 2019, around 9:40 a.m. Jones repeatedly slugged a woman in the face at Trinity Ave. and E. 166 St. in the Bronx, then barked, “Give me your f—ing money!” before stomping on her head and making off with her EBT card, according to the criminal complaint.
George Ennin (Courtesy of family)
Two days later Jones attacked a second woman at Boston Rd. and Home St. in the Bronx around 2 a.m. in a similar fashion. He punched her in the head, demanded she give him “everything in your pockets,” then beat and kicked her, breaking several of her ribs, her wrist and an orbital bone, before taking off with her cell phone and $13 in cash, police said.
A Bronx judge sentenced Jones to four months probation as a violent felony offender for the attacks, according to law enforcement sources.
Jones was undergoing a psychiatric evaluation and his arraignment was still pending Wednesday.
Adusei said she could not understand why Jones wasn’t already in jail.
George Ennin (Courtesy of family)
“We read about that man on the news,” she said. “New York’s court system knows that he’s a criminal. Why did they allow him to be on the streets? I would tell my brother’s soul, ‘George, do not sleep until justice is served.’”
Adusei said she talked with her brother, who was the oldest of five, with four sisters, the day before he was killed.
“We spoke for about 20 minutes on Sunday after he came back from Africa,” she said. “He was just telling me that he’s back safely. Right now, my mother is at home. When you call her, she’s crying, and she’s back in Africa. She’s on retirement. She’s old, she’s 75.”
Adusei said the family had reservations about the Bronx neighborhood.
“When his older daughter completed senior high school, we didn’t want her to stay in the Bronx because the Bronx is crazy,” she said. “So she was sent to Maryland to live with my sister because she lives in a secure, gated community.”
Now the family has to take care of both daughters, she said.
“We are going to take care of the girls,” she said. “Who else? Their mother is in Africa.”