Brandon Lee Buried Next To His Father In Seattle -- About 100 Attend `Intimate Gathering'

Actor Brandon Lee, son of martial-arts star Bruce Lee, was buried next to his father at a private ceremony in Lake View Cemetery in Seattle yesterday.

His mother, Linda Cadwell, talked for 10 or 15 minutes "about his life and how dearly he loved his father," said Taky Kimura, a friend of the family who attended the service.

"It was a very intimate gathering," Kimura said.

Friends brought flowers and wreaths and laid them next to a headstone marking the burial place of Bruce Lee, who died 20 years ago.

Brandon Lee died Wednesday about 12 hours after he was shot with a prop gun that was supposed to be loaded with blanks. Police in Wilmington, N.C., where Lee was filming a movie, planned to conduct ballistic tests after an autopsy showed he was killed by a .44-caliber bullet during the filming.

In the film, Lee was playing a rock star who is murdered by a gang, then comes back to life with supernatural powers to avenge his death.

Kimura, who was a close friend of Bruce Lee, said he was expecting a smaller gathering than the 100 or so people who showed up about 11 a.m.

Among them were Brandon's sister and his fiancee, whom Brandon had planned to marry April 17, Kimura said.

As soon as the service ended, the family and other friends left for a memorial service scheduled today in Los Angeles.

As a child, Brandon Lee lived for a time in Seattle and attended fourth grade here.

In an interview last year, he recalled his father teaching him how to defend himself shortly after he began to walk.

His father had been the instructor for a martial-arts class in Seattle in the early 1960s. Kimura recalled first meeting Bruce Lee in Seattle in 1959, when Kimura was 38 and Lee was 19.

Brandon, 28, was just 8 when his 32-year-old father died, apparently of an allergic reaction to a pain-killer. A University of Washington philosophy student, Bruce Lee was buried in Lake View Cemetery in 1973.

Referring to Brandon, Kimura said he met him only a few times, first as a baby, when he was 7 or 8 and when he was a teenager.

"I didn't know (Brandon) that well," Kimura said.

"I was hoping to get to know him better, but of course it wasn't to be."

Kimura said Brandon's mother kept the service uplifting and without bitterness, despite the uncertainty surrounding his death.

Still, said Kimura, she was in deep anguish that she lost him at such a young age.