Criminal charges ARE on the table in Alec Baldwin shooting case, say prosecutors - as it emerges crew were using actor's gun to shoot cans with live ammo just HOURS before tragic death on set
Criminal charges are on the table in a fatal accidental shooting by actor Alec Baldwin on the set of a western film, according to local prosecutors.
Legal documents have revealed that Baldwin was drawing a gun across his body and pointing it at a camera during a rehearsal on the Santa Fe set of the film Rust when it fired, killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injuring director Joel Souza.
Affidavits containing statements from Souza and camera operator Reid Russell state that Baldwin was handed a prop gun and was told it was unloaded.
It came after a crew member revealed a photo from the set was taken on the same day of the incident and shows Hutchins holding a camera while Baldwin stands in costume surrounded by crew members in the church setting.
Santa Fe County District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies has now revealed that criminal charges have not been ruled out, telling The New York Times that the firearm used in the incident was a 'legit' and 'antique-era appropriate gun' - not a prop.
First assistant director David Halls had earlier told crew members that the revolver being handled by Baldwin, the film's lead actor and producer, was a 'cold gun', a term used by filmmakers to indicate that a prop gun is safe to use and not loaded with live ammunition.
The prosecutor added that an 'enormous amount of bullets' had been found on the set and an investigation was needed into the nature of that ammunition.
It follows reports that the gun the 63-year-old actor used to accidentally kill Hutchins was used by crew members to shoot at beer cans just hours before the incident.
The head electrician on Alec Baldwin's Rust has shared the final photo of Halyna Hutchins (pictured holding the camera) on set in the church before she was shot dead
Criminal charges are on the table in a fatal accidental shooting by actor Alec Baldwin on the set of a western film, according to local prosecutors
Alec Baldwin shot and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins (pictured) on Thursday when he was handed prop gun with live ammunition
Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was seen for the first time as she paced outside her home on Monday, October 25
The rookie armorer was snapped deep into a phone conversation outside her home
According to an insider with knowledge of the set, several crew members on the set had taken several prop guns out the morning of the incident to go 'plinking' - a hobby in which people shoot at beer cans with live ammunition to pass the time.
The individual, who spoke on condition of anonymity to The Wrap, added that the round of unsanctioned target practice occurred last Thursday, just hours before Baldwin discharged one of the weapons and shot both Hutchins and Souza.
The weapon was one of three prop guns that the film's rookie armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, 24, had set up outside the set location on a gray cart, in the desert near the city of Santa Fe.
Souza, 48, was seen for the first time Tuesday since his release from hospital following the shooting.
He looked distraught as he sat in a car in Palo Alto, California with a female companion.
Souza, who was shot in the shoulder in Thursday's tragedy, was released from the Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center in Santa Fe on Friday.
He was seen near his San Francisco home Tuesday, holding his head in his hands in the passenger seat ahead of a press conference scheduled for Wednesday, at which more details of the accident will be revealed.
Joel Souza, 48, was seen on Tuesday near his San Francisco home with his head in his hands. The California-born director of Rust was shot in the shoulder on Thursday in a shooting that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, 42
Souza was in the passenger seat of the car in Palo Alto, with an unnamed woman, on Tuesday
He was seen on Tuesday frequently rubbing his eyes, visibly upset. On Wednesday a press conference will be held to discuss the latest findings from the investigation
Souza was released from hospital on Friday, a day after the shooting on the set of the Western film
The director was seen wearing a face mask on Tuesday, putting it to wear outside the vehicle
Alec Baldwin, star of the Western film, shot her dead in rehearsals. Affidavits containing statements from Souza and camera operator Reid Russell state that Baldwin was handed a prop gun and was told it was unloaded.
Souza told investigators with Santa Fe County Sheriff's office that he heard 'what sounded like a whip and then a loud pop.'
He noticed Hutchins grabbing her midsection as she stumbled backward.
She 'was assisted to the ground' by other crew members and Reid Russell, a camera operator, recalled Hutchins saying she could not feel her legs.
Souza on Saturday issued a statement, saying: 'I am gutted by the loss of my friend and colleague, Halyna.
'She was kind, vibrant, incredibly talented, fought for every inch and always pushed me to be better. My thoughts are with her family at this most difficult time.
'I am humbled and grateful by the outpouring of affection we have received from our filmmaking community, the people of Santa Fe, and the hundreds of strangers who have reached out….. It will surely aid in my recovery.'
According to search warrant executed by the Santa Fe County Sheriff's office last week, Gutierrez-Reed was the last person to handle the gun, leaving it along with the two other revolvers unattended on the cart in the early hours of October 21.
It is at this point, the insider reveals, that a group of crew members took the weapons without the director and first director's knowledge, and forgot to unload the firearm in question.
Representatives for the production of Rust did not immediately respond to DailyMail.com's request for comment on the matter, but in a previous statement issued to multiple outlets, Rust Movie Productions said: 'The safety of our cast and crew is the top priority of Rust Productions and everyone associated with the company.
'Though we were not made aware of any official complaints concerning weapon or prop safety on set, we will be conducting an internal review of our procedures while production is shut down.
'We will continue to cooperate with the Santa Fe authorities in their investigation and offer mental health services to the cast and crew during this tragic time.'
However, an actor on the film's set directly contradicted the company's statement, revealing to TMZ Tuesday that filming often felt 'life-threatening' - a sentiment that was then echoed by other members of the production.
The actor, Ian A Hudson, told to the outlet that he felt particularly terrified filming a scene where his character was gunned down by a crowd of other actors using nearly a dozen guns - all of which were real.
'I actually did feel the blanks hitting my face and my body. I could feel the wind from the shotgun being discharged,' the actor said, 'It was heavy. It was strong … It was life-threatening. It felt too surreal.'
It comes as the head electrician on Baldwin's Rust shared the final photo of Hutchins filming on set in the church in which she was shot dead.
Serge Svetnoy was standing next to the cinematographer when she was killed during rehearsals as Baldwin practiced drawing the weapon in the church pew and it accidentally fired.
The experienced crew member has since described the harrowing moment he held his friend in his arms as she lay dying while she bled over his hands.
She was shot in the chest, while director Joel Souza was also wounded, and she stumbled back before collapsing, saying: 'I can't feel my legs.'
Penning an emotional post in tribute to his friend, Svetnoy blamed her death on 'negligence and unprofessionalism' as he blasted those responsible for not doing their jobs properly and claimed producers hired an inexperienced armorer.
He wrote: 'Yes, I was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Halyna during this fatal shot that took her life and injured the director Joel Souza. I was holding her in my arms while she was dying. Her blood was on my hands.
'I do not wish anyone to go through what I went through, what her husband Matt Hutchins and her son Andros went through, and the actor Alec Baldwin, who has been handed a gun on set. He has to live with the thought that he took the life of the human because of unprofessional people.'
The electrician said Gutierrez-Reed, who was named on Friday as the person who loaded Baldwin's vintage Colt pistol, was too young to be doing her job.
Days earlier, Svetnoy uploaded the final photo of his friend and colleague on Facebook, saying: 'This is the last photo with Halyna on set.'
The photo was taken on the same day of the incident and shows Hutchins holding a camera while Baldwin stands in costume surrounded by crew members in the dimly lit sparse church setting.
He said: 'The negligence from the person who was supposed to check the weapon on the site did not do this; the person who had to announce that the loaded gun was on the site did not do this;
'The person who should have checked this weapon before bringing it to the set did not do it. And the DEATH OF THE HUMAN IS THE RESULT!
'I'm sure that we had the professionals in every department, but one - the department that was responsible for the weapons.
'There is no way a twenty-four-year-old woman can be a professional with armory; there is no way that her more-or-less the same-aged friend from school, neighborhood, Instagram, or God knows where else, can be a professional in this field.'
The experienced crew member called on producers to ensure such an accident is never repeated, by hiring qualified staff who know how to be safe on potentially dangerous sets.
He said: 'To save a dime sometimes, you hire people who are not fully qualified for the complicated and dangerous job, and you risk the lives of the other people who are close and your lives as well.
'I understand that you always fight for the budget, but you cannot allow this to happen.
'There should always be at least one professional in each department who knows the job. It is an absolute must to avoid such a tragedy, like the tragedy with Halyna.'
Svetnoy finished off his post by saying: 'We all loved Halyna. May God bless her soul.'
His comments come as Gutierrez-Reed was pictured for the first time at her Arizona home since the fatal shooting.
Exclusive DailyMail.com photos showed her pacing outside her home and speaking on the phone before dashing back inside and refusing to answer the door.
A call sheet obtained by DailyMail.com names the 24-year-old as the film's assistant prop master and armorer, overseen by prop master Sarah Zachry.
She also appeared in a photo posted by Hutchins to her Instagram page showing the whole crew two days before she was killed.
According to a police warrant, the Colt was one of three pistols left on a table by Gutierrez-Reed and was handed to Baldwin by British assistant director Dave Halls who told the veteran actor it was 'cold'- not realizing it had been loaded with live rounds.
Cops say Baldwin was practicing drawing the weapon when it fired – fatally hitting cinematographer Hutchins, 42, and injuring director Souza, 48.
After the shooting, the armorer took possession of the gun and a spent casing, which were turned over to police, along with other prop guns and ammunition used on the set.
According to a call sheet obtained by DailyMail.com, the crew was rehearsing a mock gunfight inside the church building when Hutchins was hit.
Co-stars Jensen Ackles, Swen Temmers and Travis Hammer were also in the scene – numbered 121 - alongside Baldwin's stunt double Blake Teixeira and stunt coordinator Allan Graf.
Ackles spoke about his weapons training for the film a week before the tragic on-set shooting accident.
The actor, who frequently used a gun playing Dean Winchester for 15 seasons on Supernatural, regaled a crowd of fans with an anecdote about his brief gun training for Rust a week before Baldwin's tragic gun accident.
'I've got a 6 AM call tomorrow to have a big shootout,' Ackles was heard saying in a video captured by a fan. 'They had me pick my gun, they were like, 'Alright, what gun would you like?' and I was like, 'I don't know?' and the armorer was like, 'Do you have gun experience?''
Serge Svetnoy has described the harrowing moment he held Halyna Hutchins in his arms after she was accidentally shot by Alec Baldwin (pictured: Serge and Halyna)
The gaffer said in an emotional Facebook post that he and Hutchins were friends and had worked on a number of films before
Hannah Gutierrez-Reed allegedly did not check the gun before placing it on the prop table to be used
Halyna Hutchins' October 19, 2021 Instagram post shows cast members and staffers Alec Baldwin, Halyna Hutchins and armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed (Circled left to right) on the set of Rust in Santa Fe, New Mexico
well, this is how you load it, this is how we check it and make sure it's safe.''
The crowd, as well as Jensen's Supernatural co-star Jared Padalecki, burst out laughing since the actor had so much on-camera experience shooting.
He continued with the story, telling the group that the armorer told him to fire off some blank rounds over in a field.
'So she's like, 'I'll just put some blanks in there and just fire a couple of rounds towards the hill.'
'I walk out and she's like, 'Just make sure you pull the hammer all the way back and aim at your target'.
Demonstrating how he did it in training, Jensen said he whipped the gun out of his holster and expertly fired the weapon, leading the armorer to jokingly call him 'an a**hole' for pretending like he was inexperienced.
Production notes show the Colt pistol was one of several weapons on set at the time but the only one used in 121 and the preceding 118.
Filming had been due to continue with a scene that showed Baldwin being thrown into a stagecoach but it was halted following the accidents.
Further scenes featuring Baldwin and Ackles had been scheduled for the weekend but have now been postponed indefinitely.
Rust was only the second movie Gutierrez-Reed has worked on and sources on the set described her as 'inexperienced and green'.
According to her LinkedIn page, she most recently worked as a videographer at Synth Fire, a California-based news and media company, and as a documentary filmmaker for the City of Flagstaff in Arizona.
She worked as an armorer for Yellowstone film ranch between March and June 2021, but according to the page stopped working there three months before filming for Rust started in October.
Gutierrez-Reed had only recently left Northern Arizona university, where she studied creative media and film between 2017 and 2020.
The daughter of legendary Hollywood armorer Thell Reed, 78, Gutierrez-Reed previously worked on Nicholas Cage movie The Old Way – admitting beforehand that she 'wasn't sure' if she was ready in a podcast interview.
She said: 'I almost didn't take the job because I wasn't sure if I was ready, but doing it, it went really smoothly.'
She also admitted in the podcast interview she found loading blanks into a gun 'the scariest' thing because she did not know how to do it and had sought help from her father.
But while Gutierrez-Reed thought the job had gone smoothly, sources told the Daily Beast that the rookie armorer was 'unsafe' and had handed a gun to 11-year-old actress Ryan Kiera Armstrong.
The source said: 'She was a bit careless with the guns, waving it around every now and again. There were a couple times she was loading the blanks and doing it in a fashion that we thought was unsafe.'
The insider added that they had seen her loading a gun on pebble strewn ground – which has the potential to be dangerous – before handing off the gun to Armstrong.
'She was reloading the gun on the ground, where there were pebbles and stuff,' the source said. 'We didn't see her check it, we didn't know if something got in the barrel or not.'
Meanwhile, sources on the Rust set have said the fatal incident was a result of production failings from top to bottom.
Zak Knight, a pyrotechnic and special effects engineer who is a member of Local 44, told DailyMail.com on Friday that Hutchins' death was caused by a 'cascade of failures' by multiple people: 'There should have never been live rounds on a movie set, that's number one. Number two is every single person on a movie set has a right to inspect a weapon before it's fired. And number three is, there is no reason to ever put a person in front of a weapon that's firing.
Several sources from the set have said that Gutierrez-Reed was 'careless with the guns' on set
Gutierrez-Reed (left) admitted in a podcast interview she found loading blanks into a gun 'the scariest' thing because she did not know how to do it and had sought help from her father, legendary gunsmith Thell Reed, (right) to get over the fear
An aerial view of the Bonanza Creek Ranch in Santa Fe, where Rust was being filmed. Workers had been protesting over the fact production wouldn't pay for them to stay in hotels and motels in Santa Fe, instead forcing them to drive an hour to Albuquerque
Sources added that assistant director Halls, who handed the gun to Baldwin and told him it was safe, should have checked the weapon.
'He's supposed to be our last line of defense and he failed us,' one of the sources on set said. 'He's the last person that's supposed to look at that firearm.'
A Rust production source told The Daily Beast that there were at least two previous incidents of guns being accidentally discharged by other crew members on set before Thursday's tragic incident.
Rust crew members claim there were several complaints made against the armorer on the set and that at least six 'fed-up' people had walked off the set prior to Gutierrez-Reed handing Baldwin the gun that killed Hutchins.
The crew made their complaints directly to assistant director Dave Hall - who is named in the search warrant affidavit as the person handed Baldwin the gun that killed Hutchins and told him it was safe - and demanded all the discharges were documented.
'All of us yelled at him, 'That better be on the production report, these guys are irresponsible and shouldn't be here,' a production source said. 'That should be automatic grounds for termination on a union film set, you should be gone. The first time that gun went off without telling anybody, that whole department should have been replaced, immediately. Clearly production thought better of it, decided to roll the dice and pay the ultimate price.'
Deadline also cites an unnamed source who said a gun had gone off 'in a cabin' while someone was holding it, days prior to the shooting that killed Hutchins.
'A gun had two misfires in a closed cabin. They just fired loud pops – a person was just holding it in their hands and it went off,' they said, apparently referring to unintentional discharges.
A Santa Fe County Sheriff Department spokesman said: 'The investigation remains active and open. Witnesses continue to be interviewed and evidence collected.'
In addition to the criminal probe, New Mexico's Occupational Health and Safety Bureau is investigating Hutchins' death, and could impose civil penalties even if no charges are brought in the case.
'Our state OSHA program is investigating this,' Rebecca Roose, deputy cabinet secretary of the New Mexico Environment Department,' told Deadline. 'The state takes all workplace safety issues very seriously and will work diligently through our investigation of this tragic fatality.'
No comments