Yoseph Robinson Knew His Killer, Building Super Says

By Alicia Cruz

The Black Urban Times

An odd twist in the Yoseph Robinson murder case surfaced after the superintendent of the building suspect Eion Klass lived in told The New York Daily News that the two men knew one another.

"He liked Yoseph," said Emre Erkan, the super of the Nostrand Ave. building where Klass lived with his girlfriend.

Erkan claimed that Robinson and Klass used to smoke cigarettes together at the store, which was just three doors down from the crime scene.

Robinson, 34, was a store clerk at the MB Vineyards liquor store on Nostrand Avenue and Avenue J. Last Thursday, Robinson was at the store talking with his girlfriend and a relative around 9:30 p.m. when a masked gunman burst into the store armed with a gun and demanded money from the cash register.


“He stuck a gun at me,” Lahavah Wallace (Lahavah Shneor), Robinson's girlfriend told The NY Times.“He told me to give him my jewelry.”

As Wallace began removing her gold bracelet, Robinson suddenly lunged across the counter, she said, swatting at the weapon. A struggle ensued between the two men and Robinson yelled for Wallace and his cousin to run.

“As I was running to the back, I heard the shots,” Wallace said.

When she returned to the front, she found her boyfriend of one month, sprawled on the floor, struggling to raise his head. The Jamaican native had been shot three times in the chest and arm. He was taken to Kings County Hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Abraham Silverberg, 45, of Brooklyn, said Klass used visit the liquor store where Robinson worked every Thursday night for wine tasting.

"We're so shocked. We can't believe this is the same man," Silverberg told The NY Daily News.

Joseph Walcott, 38, who claims to have seen Klass before the shooting, described him as a desperate man who was in need of money.

"He was going through some things," said Walcott. "He said he needed money. I saw him downstairs smoking, looking real stressed. Then I heard about the shooting and was like, 'Damn, my boy might have done that.'"

"It's like his tragic death closed a circle," the owner of MB Vineyards Benjy Ovitsh, told Virtual Jeruselum. Ovitsh,39, Robinson's employer and close friend, was on vacation when Klass shot Robinson.

The two men met two years ago at Khal Zichron Mordechai synagogue in Brooklyn when Robinson first returned from Los Angeles. Soon after, Robinson began working at the store.

"People used to come into the store just to see him. He was warm and open, always up for a good conversation or debate," Ovitsh told Aish.com. "He really made a Kiddush Hashem (sanctification of God's Name) every single day. He affected everybody."

Klass had only been out of prison for 10 months the day of the Robinson murder. He served 11 years in state prison after being convicted of attempted murder and robbery in 1998, The NY Daily News reported.

Robinson, a native of Spanish Town, Jamaica, walked away from a troubled life as a drug dealer to become a Hip Hop recording executive in L.A. and later, a popular and loved figure within the community after he converted to Orthodox Judaism.

Community leaders mourned his death, saying he was a recognizable character whom everyone loved.

Klass, who was on parole at the time of the shooting, was charged with first-degree murder and criminal possession of a weapon last week after detectives began receiving intel that he was the shooter. While interrogating him about Robinson's murder, detectives charged him with another Brooklyn robbery that occurred on June 28, according to Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.

Klass has not confessed to that crime, but allegedly made incriminating statements to detectives, according to police sources, The NY Daily News reported.

Born Chester Robinson, the former executive of “No Exit,” record label, changed his name to Yoseph when he converted in 2000. He was born in Spanish Town, Jamaica and was returned home for burial beside his beloved grandmother, Pearl.

He is survived by four children.