Friends, Family Share Farewells for Slain Actor

Friends and family--from Hollywood to his hometown high school--gathered here Saturday to celebrate the life of Anthony Dwain Lee, never dwelling long on the circumstance of his death.

“I’m going to ask you to help me take this bitter poison and turn it into medicine,” said Tina Lee-Vogt, sister of the 39-year-old actor who was shot to death Oct. 28 by a Los Angeles Police Department officer. She arranged the memorial to her only sibling, held in a community center near the south Sacramento neighborhood where they were raised.

With poetry, song and storytelling, more than 100 people basked in memories of the handsome, towering Lee. They recalled him as a gregarious, giving friend, always ready with encouragement.

Members of the Buddhist group that Lee belonged to for 15 years, Soka Gakkai International, played guitar and drums while friends from theaters across the West Coast sang his favorite song, “Amazing Grace.”

Lee, a baritone-voiced actor who worked his way from “Guys and Dolls” on the high school stage to guest appearances on popular television shows, had been laughing with a friend at a Halloween party in a Benedict Canyon mansion when a police officer shined a flashlight through a bedroom window.

Police have said that Lee pointed a realistic rubber gun toward the officer, who fired multiple times, fearing that his life was in danger. The officer, Tarriel Hopper, was called to the party with his partner on a noise complaint.

One day after learning of her brother’s death, Lee-Vogt hired attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. to represent the family. Cochran has called the behavior of the officer who shot Lee reckless and promised to scrutinize LAPD training and tactics. The LAPD and district attorney’s office are investigating.

“I feel that I represent families that may not have the same voice that I have, the same resources,” said Lee-Vogt, who works for the chief of the Sacramento Police Department, “and might not challenge LAPD when they say, ‘Oh, that’s just the way things are.’ ”

“It was like this was an acceptable loss to them,” she said. “This was not an acceptable loss to me.”

Lee’s final work as an actor is an episode of “ER” in which he portrays a homeless man. It will air the evening of Thanksgiving. It was the one holiday that Lee tried to spend with his sister, whom he gave away at her wedding 11 years ago just after their father died.

“He had so much life ahead of him,” said Lee-Vogt. “Regardless of how he died, it would be tough to have him die at 39.”

Jeffrey French, 39, attended Valley High School a year behind Lee and played the Lion to Lee’s Tin Man in a Sacramento community theater production of “The Wiz.” They remained solid friends and shared dinner at French’s Mission Viejo home two weeks before Lee’s death.

French said Lee pulled up to his house in a gray LeBaron convertible, cigar gripped in his teeth, laughing and joking: “Black man in the neighborhood!”

Lee brought top-shelf tequila in the same flask that French had given him as a gift 20 years ago, a flask that Lee had once used as a stage prop. They walked through the neighborhood, talking about a nonprofit theater corporation Lee hoped to revive.

Lee wrestled French’s five sons, who knew him as dad’s “movie star” friend. French remembers Lee as happy that night for having just finished the filming for “ER.”

When he left, French said, Lee told him, “Take it easy, brother, and I’ll see you in a couple of weeks.”

Christopher Wright, Lee’s agent, said the best in Lee’s career had been yet to come. They had met after an impressed Los Angeles theater owner beseeched Wright to come see Lee in the play “Buffalo Soldier,” in which Lee portrayed a former slave serving as a U.S. Cavalry scout.

“He was in the game at nearly its highest level,” Wright said.

“We won’t dwell on the sadness of the inexplicable facts,” he told the audience Saturday, “other than to say this is the most difficult-to-accept tragedy in my experience.

“I leave it to others at another time and place to discuss the unique problems of life in Los Angeles,” Wright said, “and the relationship between our peacekeepers and its citizenry.”