Deadly shot on rusty set

A sign points towards Bonanza Creek Ranch, where cinematographer Halyna Hutchins is presumed dead after Alec Baldwin fired a prop shot on set.
Photo: Sam Wasson / Getty Images

On October 21, a woman died on the set of the Western film set Rust after a prop gun Alec Baldwin was holding was accidentally ejected during a rehearsal for a scene. The victim, Halyna Hutchins, was a cinematographer on the film filming at Bonanza Creek Ranch, in Santa Fe County, New Mexico. Hutchins was taken to hospital by helicopter shortly after the shooting and was pronounced dead upon her arrival. Director Joel Souza was also injured and hospitalized.

The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office is currently investigating the incident and has not charged anyone involved. “We’re trying to determine right now how and what type of ammunition was used in the weapon,” spokesman Juan Rios told New York. Times in the aftermath of the shooting. Oath released 27 may help answer that question: Dave Halls, an assistant director on the film, told investigators he didn’t check every ring in every chamber of every gun on the film. school. Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza explained: “We will consider it a live bullet, a live bullet, because it was fired from a weapon and clearly caused the deaths of Mrs. Hutchins and Mr. Souza is injured.”

Mendoza added: “We also believe we have used cartridges from the bullet that came out of the gun.

While the props department typically uses real guns on set – models, capped guns and non-functional firearms are also possible options – as a rule, they don’t use live ammunition. New York Times reported that investigators removed about 500 rings from Rustestablished, but usually, production use space To recreate the shooting effect, sometimes powder is added to increase the effect of the explosion on the screen. But void can also do damage – especially when shooting at close range. Production teams often set strict rules around the use of spare guns, but The accident happened However: Bruce Lee’s son, Brandon Bruce Lee, died while filming Raven in 1993 after a bullet lodged in the barrel of a prop gun was ejected along with the drum. And in 1984, actor Jon-Erik Hexum broke his skull while playing Russian roulette with an empty hand, dying a few days later.

In his oath, published October 24, Souza said the gun went off during a rehearsal of a scene where Baldwin, sitting on a church pedestal, pulled the gun from its holster and aimed it straight “at the camera lens.” The director explained that he and Hutchins were checking the camera angle at the time, and assistant director Dave Halls told Baldwin that he used a “cold gun” right before the shot. Earlier this week, Related press reported that Halls was fired from the movie The Road of Freedom in 2019, after “a gun was discharged unexpectedly” and injured a crew member. RustThe chief executive officer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, told detectives that she also checks the weapons to make sure they don’t contain live ammunition.

In a November 1 interview with Fox News, Halls attorney Lisa Torraco suggested that questions about AD’s track record were misplaced, as gun safety was not out of the question. his sights. “He is not responsible for checking [the gun]’ she said. ‘That’s not the assistant director’s job. If he chose to check guns because he wanted to make sure people were safe, he could do that, but that’s not the case. his responsibility”. where direct came from” and “in the end this series would never have been compromised if live ammo wasn’t introduced.” In an interview on NBC’s Today’s show, attorney Jason Bowles – representing Gutierrez-Reed – raised the possibility of vandalism, speculating that someone may have placed a life ring in a fake ring box to make a statement about the placement conditions.

Within weeks of shooting, a chaotic picture of the environment on set had formed. Follow LA Times, half a dozen union camera crew members walked to protest working conditions just hours before Hutchins was shot. There were two fires by mistake on firearms on Saturday and one the week before, a source told Times. “There should have been an investigation into what happened,” said an unnamed crew member. “There is no safety meeting. There is no guarantee that it will not happen again. All they want to do is rush, hurry, rush.” NS Times reports that someone texted the production manager: “We’ve now had three accidental discharges. This is super unsafe”. An actor who knew Hutchins, Jonathan McAbee, later told Everyone that the cinematographer stayed on set after the walk because she “felt responsible for the work of others there”.

In subsequent interviews with Times, 14 crew members spoke with confusion on set. “It always felt like the budget was more important than the crew members,” says Lane Luper, A-camera’s first assistant. “Everything is about schedule and budget.” Luper said the production was innovating on the hotel rooms promised to the crew (a problem that Hutchins allegedly solved by cutting her own costs) and people not getting paid. .

Other crew members have denied these claims. On November 2, Baldwin repost a series of messages from Speaker Terese Magpale Davis refute the idea that Rust was a mess. “I’m sick of this story,” she wrote, according to Baldwin’s screenshot. “I worked on this film. The story that we’re overworked and surrounded by chaotic, unsafe conditions is bullshit.” Davis said most crews work less than 12 hours a day and have hotel rooms, and manufacturers have held regular safety meetings.

For his part, Baldwin called the shooting “one in a trillion episodes” in one exchange with the paparazzi outside his home in Vermont on October 30. “We were a very, very, very, very, very good team to shoot a movie together, and then this terrible event. happened,” he said, adding that Hutchins was his friend. “I am not authorized to comment as this is an ongoing investigation. I got orders from the sheriff in Santa Fe. These are his first public comments since the day after the shooting, when he addressed the incident on Twitter.

Grandfather Written. “I am fully cooperating with the police investigation into how this tragedy happened and I am in contact with her husband offering his support and his family. My heart breaks for her husband, their son, and everyone who has ever known and loved Halyna. “

Ahead of a lengthy interview that aired on December 2, ABC released a preview showing Baldwin telling George Stephanopoulos that “the trigger was not pulled” on the hot gun that killed Hutchins. “I didn’t pull the trigger,” he said. “I would never point a gun at anyone and pull the trigger on them, never.” He also said there was never supposed to be live ammunition on set, saying he “didn’t know” how the bullet got there.

On November 17, Rust Script supervisor Mamie Mitchell has filed a lawsuit against Baldwin, the film’s producers, six production companies, an executive and the first assistant director who worked on the film over allegations of assault and emotional distress, Deadline report. In her complaint, Mitchell, who is represented by Gloria Allred, asserted that the department did not follow safety procedures for the use of firearms. According to the suit, the upcoming scene “doesn’t call” for shooting and shooting. Baldwin allegedly received the gun from the assistant director instead of the director – the only person on set qualified to verify that a firearm was a “cold gun” and therefore safe to use. Mitchell claims that no such verification occurs on the set Rust, and Baldwin should have assumed that the gun delivered to him was loaded unless proven otherwise.

This article has been updated.