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'I Can't Get Out, Ma': Gun Victim Who Had Been Shot Twice Said Before Dying

 Master
Master "Buck" Roberson, 23, father of two, was fatally shot in Humboldt Park Monday.
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Courtesy of Family

AUSTIN — Wednesday afternoon, Robert Roberson, 62, took out a stack of pictures of his son Master Roberson (known to family as Buck) and spread them across his family's kitchen table in Austin.

It was the same mahogany kitchen table where he had enjoyed a Memorial Day feast with Buck and his 1-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter, a week before Buck was shot dead in the 700 block of North Hamlin Avenue in Humboldt Park Monday afternoon.

Ignoring pictures of young Buck with celebrities Snoop Dogg, Ice-T and Bishop Don "Magic" Juan, Roberson pointed to a picture of himself dressed in a lime green suit and Buck in a similar dapper outfit.

"He was like his daddy. He was cool. What I liked, he liked. What I did, he wanted to do as well. But I matured and he didn't get a chance to mature to do the right things. The drugs, the stuff he was doing wouldn't let him grow," said Roberson.


Robert Roberson went through pictures of his son Buck hanging with celebrities like Snoop Dogg and Ice-T. [DNAinfo/Josh McGhee]

Roberson thought he was done crying over his son, who had been shot twice previously and faced problems with "street life," he said.

But there was no stopping the flood of emotions when he found out his son had died.

While the elder Roberson worked Monday, he missed a call from his daughter and two from his wife. When family finally got through, they told him 23-year-old Buck had been killed.

Roberson, who was driving at the time of the call, said the news almost cost him his own life.

"When [my wife] told me what happened, I almost crashed [the car]. I started shouting and crying and hollering 'Buck,'" said Roberson, using the nickname given to his son by his grandmother.

"Last time [Buck was shot], the doctor said it didn't hit anything vital. This time I couldn't think nothing. They didn't say he was shot. They said he was dead," Roberson said, laying his glasses on the  dinner table in the home the family shared in the 1400 block of North Linder Avenue. He wiped away a tear with a tissue.

Josh McGhee says Buck's family was hopeful he'd get off the streets:

Buck was first shot on May 12, 2014, the day after Mother's Day, sending him into a coma from which he wouldn't wake until his 22nd birthday about a week later.

"He laid in the hospital a week or two weeks, and he was up moving around," the elder Roberson recounted. He said Buck was not fully recovered before he was running the streets and got shot again in January.

"[He was] going to get his hair braided, and someone came into the shop and shot him again. Shot him near his heart, but exited and went another way. That was God," his father said.

"[Then] I realized what had happened was that the bullet didn't kill him because Buck was strong. Buck got shot three times. He got shot three different times and two times he survived because God wanted him to survive," Roberson said.

Around 2:25 p.m. Monday, Buck was walking in the 700 block of North Hamlin Avenue in Humboldt Park when someone opened fire, police said. He was pronounced dead at Stroger at 3:16 p.m., according to the Cook County Medical Examiner's Office.

"This time, Buck was tormented so bad I guess — through the bullets, through what he was going through — that God said, 'I'm tired of you going through this. I'm going to give you some peace. I'm going to take you home with me,'" Roberson said.

The morgue told family that the shooter came from behind and shot him in the back of his head, sending him falling to the ground. The impact knocked his teeth out. After Buck fell, the shooter stood over him, shooting him several more times.

"To kill him like that was really ... it was real inhumane. It was like an animal. [The killer] had an animal thought," said Roberson, adding he would be offering a reward for information leading to the conviction of the shooter.

According to police, Buck was a gang member, but inside the Roberson family home in Austin, they remembered the "old soul" whom they named Master, a name with roots in the Black Power movement, with the hope he would be a leader like the man who shared his birthday, Malcolm X.

Roberson said he wasn't sure if his son was gang-affiliated until he asked one of Buck's brothers, who told Roberson that Buck was a Vice Lord.

"It was all fun and games for a while, but now I can't get out, ma," Buck's mother, Joy Waters, remembered him telling her.

Family didn't know the details of what Buck had done or how he found himself the target of multiple shootings, but it was apparent that he had become entrenched in "street life" and wasn't sure how to turn his life around.

"He was truly troubled inside with this life of the streets. He didn't really like it, but he was wrapped up in it. He was wrapped up in the people — his cool buddies. He would ride with so many different people because Buck was loved. But when a lot of people like you, somebody don't like you," Roberson said.

After surviving the first two shootings, Roberson hoped his son would straighten up and fly right, but he didn't know the depth of Buck's troubles until one day when Buck asked to go to church with him.

"Buck followed me in, we sat in the front row, and [he] just busted out crying," Roberson said, which is when he knew something was seriously wrong.

"Everybody came around: the preacher, all the ushers ... I grabbed him, and we stood in the middle of the floor of the church. I think we had to have at least 20 people and the preachers just praying for him," said Roberson lifting his glasses off the table back to his face.

"And I thought it would be all right, but the devil had a hold of him. The devil had his heart" — Roberson paused to corrected himself — "No. It had his mind. It didn't have his heart, because God has his heart."

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