JOIN USAlec Baldwin was told gun in fatal shooting on set was safe: Officials
On a ranch in northern New Mexico, Alec Baldwin was filming a new movie Thursday when his character, an outlaw, needed a gun.
An assistant director grabbed one of three prop guns that the film’s armorer had set up outside on a gray cart, handed it to Baldwin and, according to an affidavit signed by Detective Joel Cano of the Santa Fe County sheriff’s office, yelled “cold gun!” — which was supposed to indicate that the gun did not have any live rounds in it.
When Baldwin fired the gun, law enforcement officials said, it struck and killed the film’s cinematographer and wounded its director.
The assistant director “did not know live rounds were in the prop gun” when he gave it to Baldwin, according to the affidavit, which was made as part of a search warrant application. The affidavit did not specify what kind of ammunition the gun had been loaded with.
The results were deadly: Halyna Hutchins, 42, the film’s director of photography, was struck in the chest and flown to the University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque, where she died, officials said. Joel Souza, 48, the film’s director, was shot in the shoulder area and wounded; he was taken to Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center in Santa Fe and later released.
“There are no words to convey my shock and sadness regarding the tragic accident that took the life of Halyna Hutchins, a wife, mother and deeply admired colleague of ours,” Baldwin, 63, said in a statement Friday on Twitter.
The plot of the film Baldwin was shooting, Rust, hinges on an accidental killing and its aftermath. Suddenly the movie set — on Bonanza Creek Ranch in Santa Fe County — became the scene of a real killing and a real investigation.
Juan Rios, a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office, said Friday afternoon that the investigation “remains active and ongoing” and that “detectives entered the movie set today and continue to interview potential witnesses.”
With the search warrant, detectives were seeking additional evidence that could help shed light on the events leading up to the fatal shooting: footage or video captured during the filming, computer and cellphones left on set, as well as other firearms and ammunition.
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