ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, February 27, 1996 TAG: 9602270123
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES
TYPE: NEWS OBIT
SOURCE: Associated Press
Dr. Haing S. Ngor survived the killing fields of Cambodia only to die on the streets of Los Angeles.
Ngor, who won an Academy Award for his role as a fellow Cambodian in the 1984 movie ``The Killing Fields,'' was found shot to death beside his parked car Sunday night in front of his Chinatown home.
No immediate arrests were made, and the motive for the shooting was under investigation. But the home is in an increasingly seedy area, and some neighbors said Ngor may have been robbed.
Pic Dom, who said he was Ngor's nephew, said he believes Ngor was assassinated by Cambodian enemies.
``Political motive,'' he said. ``I think they can organize and they don't give up. They wait and wait until the best time for them to do, and they do.''
The coroner's office listed Ngor's age as 55, although police gave it as 45.
Mourners burned incense Monday at the bloodstained concrete where Ngor died. A shrine of bouquets and candles included a photograph of a beaming Ngor accepting his Oscar.
``Haing Ngor was a man of great strength and courage, and seemed to me always prepared to meet his death,'' said Oliver Stone, who directed Ngor in ``Heaven and Earth'' in 1993. ``For him to be killed so senselessly - whatever the motive - shows us that violence is no less a threat in the streets of our own cities than it was in Cambodia.''
Ngor was the first non-professional to win an Oscar for acting since Harold Russell in 1946 for ``The Best Years of Our Lives.''
In ``The Killing Fields,'' he portrayed Dith Pran, an aide to New York Times correspondent Sidney Schanberg during the Vietnam War. Pran was imprisoned by the Khmer Rouge regime that killed millions of Cambodians.
Schanberg, on vacation in Puerto Rico, said Ngor and Pran ``were both the character because they had suffered in the same way.''
Ngor, a doctor, had no acting lessons but learned his role well during four years of torture and starvation under the Khmer Rouge. He escaped to a refugee camp and finally emigrated to the United States in 1980.
In his book, ``Haing Ngor: A Cambodian Odyssey,'' Ngor wrote of watching his wife die in childbirth because helping her would reveal he had medical training and bring about his own death.
Ngor said he considered it his duty to help his homeland, one of the poorest countries in the world. He organized the Brussels-based groups Aid to Displaced Persons and Enfants d'Angkor.
A Buddhist, he filtered his experience through his belief in the cycle of birth, suffering and rebirth known as karma.
``Maybe in my last life before this one, I did something wrong to hurt people,'' he once said. ``But this life, I paid back.''
LENGTH: Medium: 62 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Dr. Haing S. Ngor celebrates receiving citizenshipby CNBin 1986. He died Sunday. KEYWORDS: FATALITY