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

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.

www.santafenewmexican.com

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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.

 

[Pocket Dragoon]

Santa Fe County Sheriff Says ‘There Was Some Complacency’ About Gun Safety On the ‘Rust’ Movie Set

Archive

By Morgan Lee, Susan Montoya and Gene Johnson, AP.

Light from a high afternoon sun slanted through the tall windows of the weathered wooden church, catching on the plank floorboards and illuminating the stained glass. Outside, the arid ground of the northern New Mexico foothills stretched for miles — a picturesque setting for an Old West gun battle.

The actor Alec Baldwin, haggard in a white beard and period garb as he played a wounded character named Harlan Rust, sat in a pew, working out how he would draw a long-barreled Colt .45 revolver across his body and aim it toward the movie camera.

A crew readied the shot after adjusting the camera angle to account for the shadows. The camera wasn’t rolling yet, but director Joel Souza peered over the shoulder of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins to see what it saw.

Souza heard what sounded like a whip followed by a loud pop, he would later tell investigators.

Suddenly Hutchins was complaining about her stomach, grabbing her midsection and stumbling backward, saying she couldn’t feel her legs. Souza saw that she was bloodied, and that he was bleeding too: The lead from Baldwin’s gun had pierced Hutchins and embedded in his shoulder.

It sounds like she was elevated & probably crouched over, with the round hitting her in the gut.
Poor girl.

A medic began trying to save Hutchins as people streamed out of the building and called 911. Lighting specialist Serge Svetnoy said he held her as she was dying, her blood on his hands. Responders flew Hutchins in a helicopter to a hospital, to no avail.

A week after the Oct. 21 shooting on the set of the movie “Rust,” accounts and images released in court documents, interviews and social media postings have portrayed much of what happened during the tragedy, but they have yet to answer the key question: how live ammunition wound up in a real gun being used as a movie prop, despite precautions that should have prevented it.

During a news conference Wednesday, Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza said there was “some complacency” in how weapons were handled on the set. Investigators found 500 rounds of ammunition — a mix of blanks, dummy rounds and what appeared to be live rounds, even though the set’s firearms specialist, armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed, said there should never have been real ammo present.

“Obviously I think the industry has had a record recently of being safe,” Mendoza said. “I think there was some complacency on this set, and I think there are some safety issues that need to be addressed by the industry and possibly by the state of New Mexico.”

Mike Tristano, a veteran movie weapons specialist, called it “appalling” that live rounds were mixed in with blanks and dummy rounds.

“In over 600 films and TV shows that I’ve done, we’ve never had a live round on set,” Tristano said.

This aerial photo shows a film set at the Bonanza Creek Ranch in Santa Fe, N.M., Saturday, Oct. 23, 2021. Actor Alec Baldwin fired a prop gun on the set of a Western being filmed at the ranch on Thursday, Oct. 21, killing the cinematographer, officials said. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
The shooting occurred on Bonanza Creek Ranch, a sprawling property that bills itself as “where the Old West comes alive.” More than 130 movies have been filmed there, dating back to Jimmy Stewart’s “The Man from Laramie” in 1955. Other features have included “3:10 to Yuma,” “Cowboys and Aliens” and the miniseries “Lonesome Dove.” The Tom Hanks Western “News of the World” and “The Comeback Trail” starring Robert De Niro, Tommy Lee Jones and Morgan Freeman were filmed there in recent years.

Workplace disputes beset the production of “Rust” from its start in early October. In the hours before the shooting, several camera crew members walked off the set amid discord over working conditions, including safety procedures. A new crew was hired that morning, but filming was slow because they were down to one camera, Souza told detectives.

At 24, Gutierrez Reed had little experience working as an armorer. She told detectives that on the morning of the shooting, she checked the dummy bullets — bullets that appear real, save for a small hole in the side of the casing that identifies them as inoperable — to ensure none were “hot,” according to a search warrant affidavit made public Wednesday.

When the crew broke for lunch, the guns used for filming were locked in a safe inside a large white truck where props were kept, Gutierrez Reed said. The ammunition, however, was left unsecured on a cart. There was additional ammo inside the prop truck.

There should've been a prop/ammo log as well. Definitely in evidence if it exists.

After lunch, the film’s prop master, Sarah Zachry, removed the guns from the safe and handed them to Gutierrez Reed, Gutierrez Reed told investigators.

According to a search warrant affidavit released last Friday, Gutierrez Reed set three guns on a cart outside the church, and assistant director Dave Halls took one from the cart and handed it to Baldwin. The document released Wednesday said the armorer sometimes handed the gun to Baldwin, and sometimes to Halls.

Gutierrez Reed declined to comment when contacted by The Associated Press on Wednesday. She wrote in a text message Monday that she was trying to find a lawyer.

Good luck with that, whore.

However Halls obtained the weapon before giving it to Baldwin, he failed to fully check it. Normally, he told detectives, he would examine the barrel for obstructions and have Gutierrez Reed open the hatch and spin the drum where the bullets go, confirming none of the rounds is live.

This time, he reported, he could only remember seeing three of the rounds, and he didn’t remember if the armorer had spun the drum.

Nevertheless, he yelled out “cold gun” to indicate it was safe to use.

“He advised he should have checked all of them, but didn’t,” a Santa Fe County sheriff’s detective wrote in the affidavit released Wednesday.

It’s unclear whether Baldwin deliberately pulled the trigger or if the gun went off inadvertently.

In the commotion after the shooting, Halls found the weapon — a black revolver manufactured by an Italian company that specializes in 19th century reproductions — on a church pew.

He brought it to Gutierrez Reed and told her to open it so he could see what was inside. There were at least four dummy bullet casings, with the small hole in the side, he told detectives.

There was one empty casing. It had no hole.

 

[Leslie Nielsen]

Countdown until he gets a thread ban and is left a quivering wreck.

Countdown until he rages and PMs the people mocking him again.

 

[Pee Cola]

What even is this posture? Looks like an easy way to fall over.

So it's not just me, then. I know fuck all about firearms, yet I know enough to see that this stance is completely wrong.

Just to clarify - and I'd appreciate being corrected by actual rifle users if I've got this wrong - physics would suggest that standing sideways, legs slightly apart with one foot in front of the other and the front foot facing the target, would make a hell of a lot more sense. Ofc I'm probably missing something here, and there's a lot more to it than just pointing and shooting. I'm just thinking of how I'd approach a rifle as a layperson without any sort of training and using said rifle effectively meant the difference between life and death.

If I'm on the right track, then this bint isn't even qualified to carry an unloaded airsoft gun, let alone a vintage weapon designed to mortally wound the shooter's intended target.

 

[Snekposter]

So it's not just me, then. I know fuck all about firearms, yet I know enough to see that this stance is completely wrong.

Just to clarify - and I'd appreciate being corrected by actual rifle users if I've got this wrong - physics would suggest that standing sideways, legs slightly apart with one foot in front of the other and the front foot facing the target, would make a hell of a lot more sense. Ofc I'm probably missing something here, and there's a lot more to it than just pointing and shooting. I'm just thinking of how I'd approach a rifle as a layperson without any sort of training and using said rifle effectively meant the difference between life and death.

If I'm on the right track, then this bint isn't even qualified to carry an unloaded airsoft gun, let alone a vintage weapon designed to mortally wound the shooter's intended target.

No, you described the standard shooting stance for longarms almost exactly. You also lean into the gun a little, forcing the recoil down into your body, not up and away from you like in that picture.

 

[Pee Cola]

No, you described the standard shooting stance for longarms almost exactly. You also lean into the gun a little, forcing the recoil down into your body, not up and away from you like in that picture.

That's what I was missing. I knew there was some extra step required to mitigate recoil.

What are the odds that some abbo from a nogunz country is better at correctly holding a gun than an alleged "armorer" whose qualifications include e-thotting and possibly absorbing some gunmanship through osmosis from her old man? Although I'm not so sure about that last qualification.

 

[Snekposter]

That's what I was missing. I knew there was some extra step required to mitigate recoil.

What are the odds that some abbo from a nogunz country is better at correctly holding a gun than an alleged "armorer" whose qualifications include e-thotting and possibly absorbing some gunmanship through osmosis from her old man? Although I'm not so sure about the last qualification.

Considering her old man is one of the best shots alive and has been slinging guns since 1950... even the slightest bit of osmosis would have had her display competency as opposed to brainless thottery.

 

[Iceland Heavy]

Considering her old man is one of the best shots alive and has been slinging guns since 1950... even the slightest bit of osmosis would have had her display competency as opposed to brainless thottery.

Something tells me he was mostly absent from her life. Dude was a contemporary of Jeff Cooper and Jack Weaver and is as old as Joe Biden is now, I'd bet she barely ever even met him until ethottery failed to pan out for her and she remembered she has a father with enough clout to get a foothold in Hollywood.

 

[Pocket Dragoon]

I'm probably missing something here, and there's a lot more to it than just pointing and shooting. I'm just thinking of how I'd approach a rifle as a layperson without any sort of training and using said rifle effectively meant the difference between life and death.

Through no fault of your own, the only thing you're really missing is that rifles & handguns are heavier than you'd expect; old designs like that particular example being particularly nose-heavy. Try taping a 5lb yoga weight to the end of a broom and hold it level, shouldered like a rifle for 60sec. That'll give you a roughly equivalent sensation.

Something tells me he was mostly absent from her life. Dude was a contemporary of Jeff Cooper and Jack Weaver and is as old as Joe Biden is now, I'd bet she barely ever even met him until ethottery failed to pan out for her and she remembered she has a father with enough clout to get a foothold in Hollywood.

The fact that she never used his last name until it went on her resume is a pretty big clue. I want to know about her mother as well.

 

[AnnLurker]

Hey man; I'm just putting my money where my mouth is; that's all.

I know a lot of fellas on here would like to see my ass in a sling, so why not dangle a carrot? Lets make it a little fun.

No one knows or cares who you are. If you are smart, you should keep it that way.

 

[SITHRAK!]

Something tells me he was mostly absent from her life. Dude was a contemporary of Jeff Cooper and Jack Weaver and is as old as Joe Biden is now, I'd bet she barely ever even met him until ethottery failed to pan out for her and she remembered she has a father with enough clout to get a foothold in Hollywood.

I doubt he even knew she was shopping herself around as an armorer that he’d trained over the course of most of her life.

Any competent HR person would have at least reached out to him to verify her (blatantly false) claims, but I guess when they needed to hire scabs ‘like, yesterday’ in the middle of Armpit NM, they figured they couldn’t afford to be picky.

What makes me go huh is that this ‘movie ranch’ has been in business for decades- you’d think they’d have enough connections in the local community and Hollywood too, to be able to recommend a decent armorer. Or maybe they didn’t want to get blackballed by the Union for helping a shitty producer hire scabs.

 

[Snekposter]

Through no fault of your own, the only thing you're really missing is that rifles & handguns are heavier than you'd expect; old designs like that particular example being particularly nose-heavy. Try taping a 5lb yoga weight to the end of a broom and hold it level, shouldered like a rifle for 60sec. That'll give you a roughly equivalent sensation.

We've got an old, old bolt-action .22 and god damn is that thing heavy in the nose. I can't shoot it properly at all due to how off-balance it is. Like, really heavy since its got a monster barrel for a .22 and about zero receiver mass. Thing even has a third flip-up sight, which should tell you something about the expected distances the maker expected.

 

[RodgerDodger]

Something tells me he was mostly absent from her life. Dude was a contemporary of Jeff Cooper and Jack Weaver and is as old as Joe Biden is now, I'd bet she barely ever even met him until ethottery failed to pan out for her and she remembered she has a father with enough clout to get a foothold in Hollywood.

Everything about this chick screams massive unresolved Daddy issues and “Notice Me Papa!”

I doubt he even knew she was shopping herself around as an armorer that he’d trained over the course of most of her life.

Any competent HR person would have at least reached out to him to verify her (blatantly false) claims, but I guess when they needed to hire scabs ‘like, yesterday’ in the middle of Armpit NM, they figured they couldn’t afford to be picky.

What makes me go huh is that this ‘movie ranch’ has been in business for decades- you’d think they’d have enough connections in the local community and Hollywood too, to be able to recommend a decent armorer. Or maybe they didn’t want to get blackballed by the Union for helping a shitty producer hire scabs.

I thought I read were she actually was an employee of the ranch before signing on to this movie production. Which I’m sure is going to come up in the incoming storm of lawsuits, where everybody involved and the victims family start suing and counter suing anyone and everyone that had any connection to this appallingly bad mess.

 

[Pocket Dragoon]

What makes me go huh is that this ‘movie ranch’ has been in business for decades- you’d think they’d have enough connections in the local community and Hollywood too, to be able to recommend a decent armorer. Or maybe they didn’t want to get blackballed by the Union for helping a shitty producer hire scabs.

Most movie "ranches" aren't anything more than shells of buildings on someone's back-40 (out of several thousand acres), who's also never been to the location & has their "offices" in LA or Vegas. At the most they'll have a guard shack & latrine trailer, if that.

I've come across a couple in the backcountry out west, and from a distance they look legit. But they're never anywhere a town would've logically been sited.

 

[WonderWino]

Blanks don't really create much recoil either. There's no "equal but opposite reaction" happening if the shell isn't propelling anything.

On that note, this is exactly why I never understood the point behind firing squads including a single blank round among the shooters with the theory being nobody would know who fired a fatal shot and would be able to theoretically absolve themselves of guilt as a result. Anyone with any firearm experience would easily tell whether there was a live round or a blank in their weapon. That said, by the same token, baldwin himself has been in enough movies involving shooting things that he would have noticed it was a live round the instant he fired it, aside from seeing the victim get hit

That nobody confirmed that the weapon was not loaded with a live round before handing it to him and that he himself failed to confirm that with his own eyes is something I find deeply disturbing in terms of the safety procedures on that set. That shit should be drilled into the heads of every person who handles a firearm for any reason, whether there are supposed to be live rounds or blanks. This is basic safety stuff that any safety instructor, military firing range instructor, hunter or anyone else involved in using firearms should be absolutely horrified at

 

[RodgerDodger]

After the shooting, Halls took the gun to Gutierrez and said he saw five rounds in the gun, at least four of them were dummy rounds indicated by a hole on the side and a cap on the round. Halls said there was also a casing in the gun that did not have the cap and did not have the hole indicating it was a dummy, the warrant said.
exerpt from https://apnews.com/article/prop-gun...yna-hutchins-e6b4d769e5df47ee0c23d4ad69f1992d

That's the bit that jumps out at me. In the middle of this scene where you've got two people shot and one dead, the Assistant Director picks up the gun, walks it over to the ArmorThot and the two of them pop it open and take out the rounds to inspect them. That's actual evidence tampering. remember the hole that differentiated dummy rounds from live was in the side of the casings. So they had to remove all of the casings from the gun. Touching each. These two murderous morons have just manufactured doubt as to why their fingerprints are on the cartridges. Prior to their act any prints on the rounds would indicate who loaded the guns. This along with one or both of them lying to the police about there being live ammo on the set. Also this calls into question what was actually in the gun. They claim 4 dummy rounds and one live bullet which tragically accidentally slipped past someone unnoticed. Why would the police believe that. They pulled the cartridges out. I'm kind of wondering if the gun wasn't fully loaded with actual bullets from the mornings "plinking" session? And yeah, there is no way that Quickdraw McGraw's Daughter and the AD doofus didn't know about the plinking, and weren't the ones actively participating in it. $10 says Instathot was happily showing off trick shooting shit she "learned" from her famous father. She's an exhibitionist,

Let me tell you about homicide scenes. Even suicides. The cops are unbelievably thorough. And they are not nice about it. To anyone. For every one I've responded on or been involved with I've ended up spending pretty much an entire day getting grilled by homicide, and walking through everything my crew or I touched. Every footstep, every blood splatter that might have come from our treatment or resuscitation efforts, such as starting an IV. Every piece of debris from medical supplies we may have left behind. Every implement we carried in with us and a full forensic accounting of everything we carried out. God forbid somebody dropped a pair of scissors or a glove, you'd spend an afternoon getting hammered by the detectives about it. And this was in situations where police officers were on scene before us. And we were uniformed EMS responding on scene after the event. Imagine how bad it is for witnesses.

 

[Pocket Dragoon]

On that note, this is exactly why I never understood the point behind firing squads including a single blank round among the shooters with the theory being nobody would know who fired a fatal shot and would be able to theoretically absolve themselves of guilt as a result. Anyone with any firearm experience would easily tell whether there was a live round or a blank in their weapon.

From what I was told, the blank round isn't really supposed to fool anyone; it's so each member of the firing-line has a chance of not being responsible for killing another person, so it's more of a personal conscience thing. The practice stemmed from drawing conscripts into firing-squads, often to shoot comrades for desertion & such, when they might not be so keen to do so.

 

[SITHRAK!]

pointing the barrel right up against his eye like a goof who can't tell if a gun is loaded or not... Maybe he should have tried doing that on s

Now there’s an idea- anyone calling ‘cold gun’ on set (for inert or unloaded weapon) should be required to point the weapon at themselves and work the action/pull the trigger at least 6 times.

Now I know what you’re thinking- did he test fire six times, or only five? Does he feel lucky?

On that note, this is exactly why I never understood the point behind firing squads including a single blank round among the shooters with the theory being nobody would know who fired a fatal shot and would be able to theoretically absolve themselves of guilt as a result.

That’s a myth. The idea was that’s what they told the soldiers selected for the squads, so as to give them hope they’d be the ‘lucky’ one. Never actually happened in practice, as blanks are immediately visually distinct. Some might say the ‘blank’ was actually a dummy round but that’s even dumber as it’d be totally obvious when an attempt was made to fire.

Interestingly, the practice of the coûp de grace, where the officer in charge of the firing squad puts one in the executed person’s head, is an extension of the ‘moral absolution’ process. It muddies the waters as to who actually fired the ‘killing’ shot as it’s not clarified whether the prisoner is alive or dead when it’s performed. It also places the finality of moral responsibility for the process of execution on the officer to absolve ‘the men’ of having killed one of their own in cases where soldiers are being executed by their own side.

 

[DDBCAE CBAADCBE]

Let me tell you about homicide scenes. Even suicides. The cops are unbelievably thorough.

I beg to disagree. There’s a long history of incompetent officers half-assing homocide and suicide investigations. I would go as far to suggest based on my experience and first hand accounts from current and retired officers over multiple states that the thorough investigations are the rarity. I want to remind everyone that the feds are nowhere near as competent and capable as they want you to believe.

 

[Pocket Dragoon]

I beg to disagree. There’s a long history of incompetent officers half-assing homocide and suicide investigations. I would go as far to suggest based on my experience and first hand accounts from current and retired officers over multiple states that the thorough investigations are the rarity. I want to remind everyone that the feds are nowhere near as competent and capable as they want you to believe.

It also depends on who they're investigating, and if a prosecutor or grand jury pushes the matter. The only thing I can add is that medical examiners are responsible for far more botched cases than people realize; contrary to what shows like CSI/etc depict.

We joke about people committing suicide by shooting themselves five times in the back while autoimmolating, but shit like that happens amazingly often, otherwise we wouldn't joke about it. Especially in rural places.

 

[ForTheHoard]

I beg to disagree. There’s a long history of incompetent officers half-assing homocide and suicide investigations. I would go as far to suggest based on my experience and first hand accounts from current and retired officers over multiple states that the thorough investigations are the rarity. I want to remind everyone that the feds are nowhere near as competent and capable as they want you to believe.

I'm curious if the police handle it differently because it's a movie and the people involved are very famous. Spielberg sodomized a preteen girl to death on set and got away with it even though some of the crazy circumstances were public knowledge. I figure it might be a little more thorough since it happened in New Mexico and not California.