Victor ‘Buddha’ Robinson is dead
WESTERN BUREAU — Attorney and National Housing Trust (NHT) director, Victor “Buddha” Robinson, died from an apparent heart attack over the weekend in St Ann, where he had gone to attend an NHT retreat.
On Friday his colleagues, friends and family will pay tribute to him inside a Montego Bay courtroom where he spent the bulk of the quarter of a century he devoted to the legal profession.
Tributes have already started pouring in for Robinson, who pushed his body to the limits of physical endurance Friday when, despite ill-health, he opted to remain at the NHT retreat. A portly man, who suffered a stroke and was also diagnosed with hypertension and diabetes last year, he suffered from ankle and back pains that sometimes prevented him from attending court.
Since the start of this year, however, Robinson, with his lumbering frame and robust laughter, has been attending court more frequently, and his sudden demise has come as a shock to many who had assumed he was on the mend.
While at the St Ann retreat Friday, he complained of heart palpitations, received medication from a doctor who was summoned, and then indicated that he felt better, according to his law partner, Morrell Beckford. But by the next morning, he was dead.
“He apparently got up Saturday morning, he started feeling unwell, lost consciousness and then that was it,” Beckford said.
An NHT director since 1996, Robinson, who was in his 50s, was yesterday lauded for his “fine legacy of dedicated public service through his contribution to the Trust, and years of service to that institution”.
A past student of the Cornwall College High School for Boys in Montego Bay, the University of the West Indies and the Norman Manley School of Law, he was known not only for his keen legal mind but also for his quick wit. The father of two teenaged boys, he will also be remembered for his love of children and music. He is a former drummer in a band and, up to about five years ago, Robinson was the host of a Hot 102 jazz programme that aired each Sunday evening.
Clayton Morgan, head of the Cornwall Bar Association, who said he last saw Robinson two days before his sudden death, said the Association had lost one of its outstanding legal minds and, more importantly, a good human being.
“He was one of our most outstanding criminal law advocates… He did his research thoroughly on the Internet and usually presented piles and piles of authority to the Resident Magistrate during the course of a case. So his passing is really a grievous blow to the legal profession in Montego Bay and (the western end of the island in general),” Morgan said.
RM Paulette Williams shared this view.
“I want to say how greatly Mr Robinson will be missed by this court. Although we mourn him we feel grateful (to have worked with him),” she told a Montego Bay courtroom yesterday morning.