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Alec Baldwin Was Told Gun in Fatal Shooting on Set Was Safe, Officials Say

The actor was told a gun being used as a prop was safe before he fired it on the set of “Rust,” killing the film’s cinematographer and wounding its director, law enforcement officials said.

Alec Baldwin in the parking lot outside the sheriff’s office in Santa Fe, N.M., after he was questioned about the shooting on the set of the film “Rust” on Thursday.Credit...Jim Weber/Santa Fe New Mexican, via Associated Press

SANTA FE — On a ranch in northern New Mexico, where the cottonwoods and the dusty foothills have formed the backdrop of Westerns since the 1950s, Alec Baldwin was filming a new movie on Thursday afternoon 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 Mr. 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 Mr. Baldwin fired the gun, law enforcement officials said, it struck and killed the film’s cinematographer and wounded its director — and raised new questions about firearms safety on film sets.

The assistant director “did not know live rounds were in the prop-gun” when he gave it to Mr. 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,” Mr. Baldwin, 63, said in a statement Friday on Twitter. “I’m fully cooperating with the police investigation to address how this tragedy occurred and I am in touch with her husband, offering my support to him and his family. My heart is broken for her husband, their son, and all who knew and loved Halyna.”


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