Alec Baldwin's 'prop firearm' kills one, injures another

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Sheriff's office: Alec Baldwin discharged prop gun that killed crew member, wounded director

Baldwin is one of the film's star actors and producers. He went to the sheriff's office willingly and provided a statement to investigators, sheriff's office spokesman Juan Ríos said.
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Actor Alec Baldwin discharged a "prop firearm" that killed a cinematographer and injured a the director of the movie Rust, being filmed on a set south of Santa Fe, a county sheriff's office spokesman said late Thursday.

Halyna Hutchins, 42 and the director of photography for the movie, died at University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque. The film's director, Joel Souza, was hospitalized in Santa Fe, Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office spokesman Juan Ríos said.

A source closed to the investigation said Baldwin, 63, was questioned by investigators late Thursday and was seen by a New Mexican reporter and photographer in tears.

Investigators are still trying to determine if the incident was an accident, Ríos said. No charges have been filed, and the investigation remains open, Ríos wrote in a news release.

The prop was fired at Bonanza Creek Ranch, where filming was underway, the sheriff's office said in an early evening news release. Baldwin stars in the production.

Hutchins died from her injuries after she was flown to University of New Mexico Hospital, according to the sheriff's office. Souza was taken to Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center, where he is receiving emergency care, the sheriff's office said. Attempts to get comment from Baldwin were unsuccessful.

“We received the devastating news this evening, that one of our members, Halyna Hutchins, the Director of Photography on a production called ‘Rust’ in New Mexico died from injuries sustained on the set,” John Lindley, the president of the International Cinematographers Guild Local 600, and Rebecca Rhine, the executive director, said in a statement, as reported by Variety. “The details are unclear at this moment, but we are working to learn more, and we support a full investigation into this tragic event. This is a terrible loss, and we mourn the passing of a member of our Guild’s family.”

Deputies were investigating how the accident occurred and "what type of projectile was discharged," the sheriff's office said in an earlier news release.

Rust Movie Productions did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Filming for Rust was set to continue into early November, according to a news release from the New Mexico Film Office. It's described as the story of a 13-year-old boy left to fend for himself and his younger brother following the death of their parents in 1880s Kansas, with New Mexico doubling for Kansas.

Guns firing blanks have been blamed for deaths in past movie productions. Online Hollywood news site Deadline reported, "Actor Jon-Erik Hexum was killed Oct. 18, 1984, on the set of the TV series Cover Up when he accidentally shot himself in the head with a gun loaded with blanks. And in 1993, Brandon Lee, the son of martial arts legend Bruce Lee, died after he was shot in the head by a gun firing blanks on the set of The Crow. Both incidents were determined to have been accidents."

This is a developing story and will be updated.
 
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SBG said:
I can't help but feel a little sorry for the guy since they had someone they imagined was competent and checked the guns to make sure they didn't have live ammo, and some law enforcement (if the reports are accurate) that checked and said the gun was 'cold' and still the gun was actually a hot gun that could kill someone.

Guy gets on an incompetent production, hiring on people with the right connections rather than those knowing what they're doing, and ends up being the one pulling the trigger to end someone's life. So ungodly depressing to imagine being in his shoes.

Makes me feel for the actors that get paranoid and want to check every gun that ever gets used on the movies they're working on, would not thing there'd typically be such exceptional people working on such productions.
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It's his production. He's a co-writer and a producer on the film. If it's an incompetent production he is a major reason why.
 
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Getting tard comed said:
It's his production. He's a co-writer and a producer on the film. If it's an incompetent production he is a major reason why.
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Yeah. Regardless of whether or not he is found criminally negligent, he is 100% morally responsible for the DP’s death.

- He absolutely knew about the safety issues. In order to be ignorant of them, we would have to believe that he was not aware of the previous firearms incidents on set, and was not aware of the reason that the crew walked, despite being the lead actor and producer.
- He may have had a hand in actively ignoring the safety issues by choosing to bring in a new crew, instead of addressing the safety issues that caused the old crew to walk.
- If he was not directly responsible for the former, but was also aware of the safety issues that resulted in 2-3 accidental firearms discharges earlier in the shoot, he absolutely should’ve walked off with the rest of the crew and refused to continue filming. The fuck are they gonna do, fire him from his own movie?

Again, this wasn’t a freak accident. It was the inevitable result of terrible safety on set that he knew about, at best passively encouraged by not using his power/pull to demand better safety standards, and at worst actively contributed to by hiring inexperienced non-union replacements instead of addressing said safety concerns. The fact that he personally pulled the trigger adds to the irony and the hilarity factor, but if you knowingly let unsafe behavior continue under your watch despite having the power and authority to put an end to it, then when somebody inevitably gets hurt, it absolutely IS your fault.

So yeah, is he criminally negligent? I’m not his lawyer and I’m not his judge, I couldn’t tell you. Personally I don’t think he’ll go to jail and that the armorer will be the fall guy for this mess, because ensuring this shit doesn’t happen is literally her job. But this event should absolutely weigh on him for the rest of his life, knowing that he had the power to address serious safety issues but chose to do nothing, or worse, actively shit the bed by hiring inexperienced workers as replacements.
 
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Neil said:
How the fuck do you think gun scenes are shot in movies? Literally none of the rules of firearms apply on a movie set because you're not actually supposed to "destroy" anything with a prop gun. Literally every action movie you've ever watched breaks the rules of "gun safety" because they're props, especially before CGI.
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Mirrors; normally they use mirrors for any shots pointing & shooting firearms directly at the camera. Every 10 pages or so someone has to remind the thread.
Neil said:
The last time we've even heard about an accident like this was in 1993.
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There's been set accidents since then, but none causing serious injury or death. That's why this one is unusual, not because they don't happen. Even low budget vanity films don't suffer from the level of crippling complacency we've seen here.
Neil said:
There's just steps taken to prevent tragedies like this from happening, steps that were neglected by Hannah Gutierrez, the woman whose job it was to make sure the props were safe.
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Poppavalyim Andropoff said:
Simply put it's not he's job.
That's what the Armourer is there for. That's their job.
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Safety is everyone's job, on any job, especially when it comes to firearms; only the most complacent & willfully ignorant think otherwise.

The way I think of it is like driving; someone can be the best driver in the world, but not paying attention to other drivers isn't just asking for an accident, it's a guarantee one will happen.

What this reminded me of is something called an "incident pit" in diving; in which many small mistakes are made that by themselves aren't enough to immediately cause death, but cumulatively reach a point of no return.
That point in this case being when someone yelled "cold gun", and we're expected to believe he's not responsible in any way because it's been well established that Baldwin was no agency of his own; he's literally an NPC running scripts.
 
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Art Kassul said:
Beating up a journalist redeems him somewhat. If only he focused his anger on the press instead of on those around him. He needs anger management, to better transfer that anger to appropriate places. Like to an MSNBC office party.
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I wonder how many paparazzi photographers consider themselves "journalists." Regardless, I'd say even they are more honorable than the CNNs and Salons of today. Whether they call themselves journalists, I suspect they harbor no illusions as to what their purpose is.
 
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Just a question since I'm no filmfag. If they are doing a scene where an actor is shooting directly at or near the camera, why the fuck don't they just have the camera on a tripod and have the crew get out of the way, then review the footage after? Is there even a reason, because it seems like just an unnecessary risk to me. It's not like they're shooting on film, are they really that worried about having to delete footage that's unusable?
 
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So you just shot your cinematographer? Good. Time to re-load and re-engage. Learn from this and remember next time don't shoot them in the face.
jwill53.jpg
 
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ProblematicUser420 said:
I wonder how many people screaming about Alec being innocent since he was "just following procedure" were also screaming about Chauvin being guilty for "just following procedure"
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>everything about this must be political
You are annoying and I would not have sex with you.
 
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