A live round discharged from a gun being used as a prop by actor Alec Baldwin on the set of the film Rust, killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injuring director Joel Souza, 48.
According to the court affidavit, as filming began on Oct. 21 at Bonanza Creek Ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Baldwin was handed a Colt .45 by assistant director David Halls. Halls told Baldwin that the gun was “cold,” meaning it was not loaded. Armorer Hannah Gutierrez grabbed the gun from a cart containing other guns.
Baldwin was practicing drawing the gun, facing the camera, when it discharged a lead bullet, hitting both Hutchins and Souza, who was standing behind Hutchins. Hutchins was taken to the University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque, where she succumbed to her wounds. Souza received emergency care from Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center in Santa Fe.
Baldwin went to the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office willingly following the incident and could be seen in tears while talking on his phone outside the office. Baldwin has yet to comment publicly on the matter.
Gutierrez told investigators that no live rounds were kept on set, which Hutchins’ death disproves. Halls told investigators that Gutierrez typically checked every gun before giving it to a crew member, though he could not remember if this had taken place with the gun that killed Hutchins. Halls gave conflicting reports of the gun’s ammunition. At one point, he told investigators he remembered three dummy rounds in the gun. Yet he said there were five rounds at another time, with at least four being dummy rounds.
“Production has been halted for the time being,” Rust Movie Productions said in a statement. “The safety of our cast and crew remains our top priority.”
A few hours before the shooting, six production crew members walked off the set, protesting poor payment, housing, and work conditions. The crew is unionized under the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE). Typically, a walk-out of this size would be enough to halt production, but New Mexico is a “right to work” state, which allowed the producers to hire non-union replacements on short notice and continue working.
IATSE member and prop maker Maggie Gaul told CNN she had worked with the film’s assistant director, David Halls, in 2019, on the film Freedom’s Path. She recalls his failure to hold safety meetings and his neglect of the common practice of announcing firearms on set. Halls was ultimately fired as assistant director of Freedom’s Path when a 1800’s-style muzzle-loading gun unexpectedly discharged and damaged a boom operator’s hearing.
“He was a person with enough red flags that his career should have been done with already,” another unnamed Freedom’s Path crewmember told CNN. “Yet he was still out there, putting the crew into outrageous situations. It’s tough to think that Halyna could have just as well been one of our crews. It was just too close for comfort.”
