The 28-year-old son of martial arts icon and legendary screen star Bruce Lee was killed in a freak accident on the set of The Crow on March 30, 1993, when fellow actor Michael Massee was supposed to shoot him at close range with a prop gun.But when Massee fired the .44 Magnum revolver, the gunpowder in the blank cartridge ignited a bullet fragment that became embedded in the barrel — propelling it into Lee’s body about 4.5m away during filming at the Carolco Studios in Wilmington, North Carolina, The Sun reported.The fragment was apparently part of a dummy shell that became lodged in the barrel – in what is known as a “squib load” – during a previous scene without anyone realising and hit Lee with virtually the same force as a live round.Lee was rushed to hospital where he underwent six hours of emergency surgery but died on the operating table.Massee, who died in 2016 from stomach cancer, was left devastated, and ended up taking a lengthy sabbatical away from acting, The New York Times reported in 2016.“What happened to Brandon was a tragic accident. It’s something I’m going to live with … It took me the time it took to be able to not so much put it in perspective but to be able to move on with my life,” he told Extra TV in 2005, CNN reported.“It’s very personal. It’s something that I wanna make sure when I work that it’s never repeated. Therefore, I’m very conscious of things going awry on set,” he said.The actor played the role of a drug-addled thug in The Crow, which featured Lee as a rock musician who returned from the dead to get revenge on the gangsters who murdered him and his fiancee.After a protracted hiatus, Massee returned to acting and played a terrorist on the hit Fox series 24 and a Satanist murderer on the NBC miniseries Revelations in 2005.After an investigation, District Attorney Jerry Spivey said no criminal charges would be filed over Lee’s death because while negligence was a factor, there was no evidence of criminal wrongdoing, The Times reported in 1993.A negligence lawsuit filed by Lee’s mother, Linda Lee Cadwell, against the studio was eventually settled out of court, the LA Times reported that year.Baldwin devastated after deathOn Thursday, a union that covers prop masters said in an email seen by Indie Wire that the prop gun used by Baldwin contained a live round.After the tragic shooting, the devastated actor reportedly asked over and over why he was given a “hot gun” that left cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, 42, dead and director Joel Souza, 48, injured on the set of the upcoming Western Rust.“In all my years, I’ve never been handed a hot gun,” the actor allegedly kept saying.A witness said Baldwin was in shock after the ordeal and “had no idea how badly they were hurt or Halyna was dead”.Hutchins was flown to the University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque, where she died from her injuries. Souza has reportedly been released from a hospital.“Detectives are investigating how and what type of projectile was discharged,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement.No charges were filed as of late Thursday and detectives are still interviewing witnesses.This article originally appeared on NY Post and was reproduced with permission
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