Dalai Lama’s Nephew Killed By Car in US

VOA Breaking News
Voice of America
February 15, 2011 at 8:55 pm

The nephew of the Dalai Lama has been struck by a vehicle and killed while conducting a “Walk For Peace” along a highway in the U.S. state of Florida.

Police said Jigme Norbu, the 45-year-old son of the Dalai Lama's brother Thubten Norbu, was walking along the side of an unlit local highway when he was hit by a sports utility vehicle Monday evening. They say he was already dead when emergency medical technicians arrived at the scene.

Norbu died about 40 kilometers south of the city of St. Augustine, where he had set out Monday on what was to have been a 480-kilometer walk to raise awareness about human rights abuses in Tibet. He had conducted several similar walks, including a trek of almost 1,500 kilometers in 2009 from the state of Indiana to New York City.

Norbu was a native of Bloomington, Indiana. His father, who died in 2008 at age 86, was a professor at the University of Indiana in Bloomington, and had served as the Dalai Lama's representative in the United States.