BULLET KILLED LEE:
28-YEAR-OLD ACTOR'S DEATH STILL BEING TREATED AS ACCIDENT

Los Angeles Times. Newsday reporter Gary Witherspoon contributed to this story.

The inquiry into Brandon Lee's death in a filming incident took a startling turn yesterday when police disclosed that the actor was killed by what appeared to be a .44-cal. bullet.

Police said it will take at least a week for laboratory analysts to determine the specific nature of the projectile that an autopsy found near Lee's spine. But a city detective said that they are still treating Lee's death as an accidental shooting, based on spent shell casings found at the scene.

Lee, 28, was the son of the late martial arts star Bruce Lee. The accident occurred Wednesday on Soundstage 4 of Carolco Studios, where the $14-million action film "The Crow," was entering its final week of production.

Officials at Carolco and others involved with the movie have declined to discuss the events leading up to the scene in which Lee was killed. They also refused to answer any questions regarding safety procedures in place for such action scenes.

In a prepared statement yesterday, Executive Producer Bob Rosen offered condolences to Lee's family and said the cast was under a great deal of emotional stress. He said they were eight days shy of completing principal photography, which began Feb. 1, and that no decisions had been made on the completion of the film.

In Los Angeles, Lee's publicist, Alan Nierob, called for a murder investigation. "How does he get a .44-caliber bullet in his stomach?" Nierob asked. "I'm not an attorney, so I don't know, but they'd have to be investigating murder. It's no longer believed to be a special effect gone wrong."

In the scene, Lee walked through a doorway carrying a bag of groceries and was shot one time by the actor Michael Massee, playing a villain in the film. At the moment of the shooting, Lee pulled a trigger hidden behind the grocery bag to set off a "squib," a small explosive device designed to make it look as if the sack bursts when struck by a bullet.

After setting off the squib, Lee collapsed on the set, bleeding profusely from the right side of his abdomen. He was rushed to New Hanover Regional Medical Center, where he died after five hours of surgery and after receiving 60 units of blood.Police said that they recovered the .44-cal. handgun from the movie set along with what appeared to be two spent shell casings, one from a blank round and the other from a "dummy" round. In filming close-ups, dummy rounds, or fake bullets, are placed in the cylinders of guns so they appear to be loaded.

Det. Rodney Simmons of the Wilmington Police Department, who was the first officer at the scene, said that in talking to a special-effects man, whom he would not identify, he learned that one of the dummy rounds was missing the slug from its tip.

Simmons said his interview of the special-effects man raised the possibility that when the fake bullets were unloaded after a close-up shot, the bullet-shaped tip of one was dislodged and remained in the gun. When the blank round was then inserted, the pistol could have discharged like a loaded firearm.

Initially, there was speculation that the explosion of the squib so close to Lee's body caused his injury. But a three-paragraph statement from Capt. L.P. Thomas of the Wilmington police Criminal Investigations Bureau said that during an autopsy performed at 9 a.m. yesterday at Onslow Memorial Hospital in Jacksonville, N.C., "what appeared to be a .44-caliber bullet was removed from Lee's body."

Los Angeles Times, 04-02-1993, © 1993, Newsday Inc