Brandon Lee - Death

Death

Brandon Lee died of a fatal gunshot wound on March 31, 1993 after an accidental shooting on set of The Crow where a blank bullet was used during a scene, which fired a fragment of a real bullet that was lodged in the barrel. Lee was rushed to the New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, NC where he underwent 6 hours of surgery. However, attempts to save him were unsuccessful, and Lee was pronounced dead at 1:03pm on March 31, 1993 at 28 years old. The shooting was ruled an accident.

In the scene in which Lee was shot, Lee’s character walks into his apartment and discovers his fiancée being beaten and raped by thugs. Actor Michael Massee's character fires a revolver at Lee as he walks into the room. Proper blank cartridges were used during the fatal scene, however due to a mix up during earlier filming of gun close ups, a bullet had become lodged in the barrel of the revolver without anyone noticing. In the fatal scene the explosive charge of the blank propelled the bullet lodged in the barrel as if the gun had been loaded with a live round, resulting in the fatal accident.

Lee's body was flown to Jacksonville, North Carolina, where an autopsy was performed. He was then flown to Seattle, Washington, where he was buried next to his father at Lakeview Cemetery, Seattle in a plot that Linda Lee Cadwell had originally reserved for herself. A private funeral took place in Seattle on April 3, 1993. Only close family and friends were permitted to attend, including Lee's immediate family as well as fiancée Eliza Hutton's parents and younger sister, who flew in from Missouri. The following day, 250 of Lee's family, friends and business associates attended a memorial service in Los Angeles, held at the house of actress Polly Bergen.

The gravestone, designed by North Snohomish County sculptor Kirk McLean, is a tribute to Lee and Hutton. Its two twisting rectangles of charcoal granite join at the bottom and pull apart at the top. "It represents Eliza and Brandon, the two of them, and how the tragedy of his death separated their mortal life together", said his mother, Linda Lee Cadwell, who described her son, like his father before him, as a poetic, romantic person.