WEST Belfast murder victim James Hughes died four decades after his brother was killed in “equally sudden and tragic circumstances”, his funeral has heard.
The 62-year-old was found dead at his 14th floor flat in Divis Tower on November 6.
Another Divis Tower resident, James Devine (42), was remanded into custody last week charged with his murder.
At his funeral on Monday, a short distance away at St Peter's Cathedral, mourners heard that Mr Hughes's brother Joseph died when an IRA bomb exploded as he drove past a car abandoned on the Upper Springfield Road in 1974.
Fr Martin Graham told a congregation that included former boxing champion Eamonn Magee, whose son was stabbed to death in the Twinbrook area of Belfast last year, that he was a “larger than life character” who was known for his generosity.
The priest spoke of his former job as a psychiatric nurse in London, and his management of a nursing home where he gave residents a “purpose in life” by “transforming it into a hive of activity”.
However, stress caused by helping patients in a system that preferred “as he perceived it, to keep people sedated and quiet and out of the way” led to Mr Hughes suffering his own mental health problems, Fr Martin said.
“There are people in this congregation today who would attest to James’s part in their mental health recovery,” the priest said.
“Where others would see a problem James would see a person, a person suffering. Where others saw brokenness, James saw potential.
“Where others saw bother, James saw an opportunity and he would try to help them to help themselves to a better life."
The funeral also heard how he once heroically saved the life of a man who had fallen under a train and almost had his arm severed.
“James, without a second thought, jumped onto the track, put a tourniquet on the wound to stem the flow of blood and accompanied the man to the hospital in the ambulance and didn’t leave him until his family arrived.”
This earned him an award for his bravery.
In another tribute to the practising Buddhist, a niece of Mr Hughes told mourners that he was “a truly unique and wonderful human being, whose name will be remembered for generations”.
He was later laid to rest in Milltown Cemetery.
