Alec Baldwin: Shot on the set of “Rust”

After Hollywood actor Alec Baldwin’s fatal shot at a camerawoman while filming, the assistant director admitted an error when checking the prop weapon. According to an interrogation report released on Wednesday, Dave Halls told police that he had not checked all the bullets in the revolver’s drum. There was apparently live ammunition in the gun: camerawoman Halyna Hutchins was killed by a “lead projectile”, according to police.

Halls had handed Baldwin the Colt .45 before the fatal shot last week and spoke of a “cold gun”. This means a firearm that does not contain live ammunition and is therefore safe.

The assistant director had apparently not checked the weapon sufficiently. “He could only remember seeing three bullets,” wrote an investigator in the interrogation protocol presented to the court. “He said he should have checked them all, but he didn’t, and couldn’t remember if she (armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed) was turning the drum.”

Hollywood star Baldwin apparently accidentally shot camerawoman Hutchins while filming the western “Rust” when he was firing a prop weapon during a rehearsal. The 42-year-old died in hospital shortly after the incident. Director Joel Souza was hit in the shoulder and injured.

The responsible sheriff Adan Mendoza said on Wednesday that there was apparently a real bullet in the .45 caliber revolver. Accordingly, a lead projectile was found in Souza’s shoulder – presumably the same projectile that killed Hutchins. According to the sheriff, other bullets were also found in the revolver. However, these were probably not real bullets.

It is unclear how live ammunition got into the revolver. The police seized 500 bullets on the film set, a “mixture” of blank cartridges, dummy cartridges and probably also real bullets, as Sheriff Mendoza said. “We’ll find out how they (the real bullets) got there, why they were there, because they shouldn’t have been there.” Apparently there was a certain “carelessness” on the film set.

Gunsmith Gutierrez-Reed told investigators, according to the interrogation protocol, that she had stored the guns on set in a safe during the lunch break before the accident, but not the ammunition. The 24-year-old also stated that real bullets were “never” kept on the film set. The industry website “The Wrap” had recently reported, however, that members of the film crew had only trained hours before the fatal incident with prop weapons and live ammunition on cans.

So far, there have been no arrests or charges in the case. The responsible prosecutor Mary Carmack-Altwies did not rule out possible criminal proceedings against Baldwin or other parties on Wednesday.

“All options are currently on the table,” said Carmack-Altwies on Wednesday at a press conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico. “At this point in time we are not excluding anyone,” said the prosecutor.

A decision on a possible indictment will only be made at a later point in time, when the investigations have progressed further. However, legal experts consider it unlikely that Baldwin will face criminal consequences – even if consequences under civil law are possible, especially since Baldwin is also a producer.

According to media reports, there had already been security problems during the shooting before the fatal incident. It was also recently announced that Hall’s assistant director had already been released because of a gun accident had been fired from another production two years ago. Halls was fired from the filming of the film “Freedom’s Path” in 2019, “after a crew member suffered a minor and temporary injury from an unexpectedly fired gun,” a producer of the film told the AFP news agency.