Brandon Lee, a Chinese-American volunteer worker and journalist who was shot by unknown gunmen in Cordillera in August, has returned home, two members of the board of supervisors of the City and County of San Francisco in California confirmed on Saturday, October 26.
According to Rappler, a crowdfunding campaign was launched to raise the money needed to airlift him from Manila. KTVU, meanwhile, reported that Lee’s family took out a loan as well as received a donation from a Europe-based environmental organization for this purpose.
The arrival of Lee was announced by supervisors Gordon Mar and Matt Haney.
“Welcome home, Brandon!” Haney posted on his Facebook page.
“I joined the friends and family of Brandon Lee at the airport and hospital to welcome him home early Saturday morning from the Philippines. Brandon and his mom Louise Lee, who has been by his bedside in the Philippines for 10 weeks, left Manila on Thursday night (October 24), and travelled on a small air ambulance plane for 24 hours, making stops in Japan, Russia, and Alaska before they landed safely at SFO,” he added.
“Early Saturday morning, surrounded by friends, family, and community, Sunset native Brandon Lee arrived safely home to San Francisco on a medical transport following the assassination attempt in the Philippines that nearly claimed his life in August,” Mar said.
Lee, who married an Ifugao native and sired a child while working as a paralegal volunteer for the Ifugao Peasant Movement in the Cordillera, shot repeatedly on August 6 by two men in front of their house in Lagawe, Ifugao, after fetching his child from school.
After a security breach at the Baguio General Hospital, where he was initially confined, he was surreptitiously transferred to St Luke’s Medical Center in Taguig.
“It took a movement – here in the Bay Area and U.S.-wide, in the Philippines, and internationally – to bring him back to safety. Thank you everyone for your support and advocacy for Brandon and his family,” Haney said.
Aside from a GoFundme that raised more than $15,000 of the $200,000 needed to airlift Lee, there was also a Masquerade, a Love Parade fundraiser, for him last October 25 in Oakland, California.
