The projectile that cinematographer Halyna Hutchins killed on the set of “Rust” was apparently a lead bullet. This was announced by Sheriff Adan Mendoza in the US state of New Mexico at a press conference on Wednesday. It was removed from the shoulder of director Joel Souza in the hospital; he was hit by it after Hutchins had previously been pierced. When actor Alex Baldwin was rehearsing the gun, an FD Pietta Colt .45-millimeter revolver, the shot broke off. Hutchins died, Souza was injured.
Live ammunition, then, and that’s forbidden on US film sets. “We are currently assuming that it was a real cartridge,” said Mendoza. “We have to find out how the ammunition got there; because it shouldn’t have been there.” About 500 more cartridges were found on the set, including blank cartridges, dummy bullets and “possibly more live ammunition”. More ammunition had also been found in the revolver that Baldwin had fired; Mendoza did not say whether this was also spicy. All ammunition and the seized weapons are now being examined in the FBI’s “Crime Lab” in Quantico, Virginia, it said. Only then is there security.
At the time of the shots on the Bonanza Creek Ranch about 100 people were on set; 16 of them in the immediate vicinity of the three film weapons that were placed on a trolley. The weapon Baldwin was firing was the only one that had worked, according to Mendoza; the other two were a plastic revolver and a .45-millimeter revolver that probably couldn’t be fired. There are currently three known people who held the revolver in their hands before the shot: Baldwin, the assistant director, and the film’s 24-year-old gunsmith.
District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies said that it was too early to be charged with negligence, and that no one was currently being excluded from the investigation; but she does not want to participate in speculation. Sheriff Mendoza did not want to comment on reports of apparently chaotic conditions on the set of the low-budget production. It was said in various media that there had been an accident on the set before the fatal shot. Baldwin’s stunt double unintentionally fired two shots on Saturday, although he was told beforehand that the weapon was a “cold gun” – without ignitable ammunition. An employee then wrote an SMS to the production manager: “This is super insecure.” “We have heard of these reports and we will investigate them,” said Mendoza simply.
Alec Baldwin on the phone after being questioned by the police. He wrote on Twitter: “I support the police investigation to the best of my ability.”
(Photo: Jim Weber / AP)
A few hours after the sheriff’s press conference, several US media reported on an affidavit by the assistant director and armorer that the sheriff’s office had submitted to the Santa Fe court on Wednesday. It contains statements to the police that the sheriff himself had not quoted. In it, the assistant director explains that although he checked the gun before handing it over to Baldwin, he did not check it thoroughly enough – for example, he did not remember that the drum of the revolver was turned. And the armorer explained that there was no live ammunition on the set. She checked the non-ignitable dummy ammunition earlier in the day, but during lunch it was left unattended on a trolley.
These statements do not clarify the picture, but they do confirm that safety protocols have not been followed thoroughly. There were also reports that cameramen and their assistants had left the set a few hours before the shot to protest the working conditions. They were all members of the union International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (AITSE)who had negotiated a new collective agreement with producers in the past few months – but which has yet to be ratified. As a result, cameramen who were not in a union were hired in a hurry.
Hollywood is heavily debating who could be to blame for the disaster
Aside from the investigation, there are fierce debates in Hollywood about who is responsible for the apparently chaotic conditions on the set of “Rust”. Neil Zoromski spoke in the Los Angeles Times about having the job as a Prop Master declined after talking to the producers: “I had a bad feeling, there were a lot of red flags.” Like many others who know the details of low-budget production, he reports of a lack of money and time. Zoromski, who has worked in the film industry for thirty years, had no information about the budget of his department; instead of the required five employees, there should be only one person who was responsible for both props and weapons on the set.
“These are two really demanding jobs that should never be occupied by just one person,” says Zoromski. On September 24th, he turned down the job: “When I sent the last email, my gut feeling was: ‘You can wait for an accident to happen.'” Three days later, the gunsmith involved in the accident wrote on Facebook that she would work as both a props assistant and a gunsmith on a film production facility in Santa Fe. Both roles are noted in this way in the production notes.
The weapon master was only responsible for the second time in this job on a film set. She is the daughter of a very experienced armorer and champion of quick-draw competitions with revolvers, who has worked with many greats in the film business. In the podcast “Voices of the West” the young woman said in September that she had been trained by her father. About her first film “The Old Way” she said at the time: “At first I was really nervous and almost didn’t take the job because I wasn’t sure if I was ready”.
There are reports about the assistant director involved in the accident that he was relieved of his duties due to an incident involving a gun in 2019 on the film set of “Freedom’s Path”. From the “Rust” set it was also said that crew members fired shots during breaks in filming and used the revolver to do so. Mendoza said that these clues are being followed up: “I would encourage anyone who knows whether a gun has been fired off the film set, for example for target practice, to report.” Otherwise, district attorney Carmack-Altwies keeps all options open as to whether and against whom she will bring charges: “Everything is possible.”
A petition on the platform change.org, which was started by a friend of the late cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and which calls for a ban on all working firearms on film sets and better working conditions for film crews, was already supported by 62,000 signatories on Wednesday evening.