Pawan Kumar
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A prosecutor in New Mexico said she will file charges against actor Alec Baldwin and armourer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed for shooting and killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins while they were filming Rust.
After more than a year of looking into the shooting outside Santa Fe in October 2021, District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies charged the 30 Rock actor and the film’s armourer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, with involuntary manslaughter.
The prosecutor said in a statement that David Halls, who is charged with careless use of a deadly weapon, has signed a plea deal.
Ms. Carmack-Altwies said, “After a thorough review of the evidence and the laws of New Mexico, I have decided that there is enough evidence to file criminal charges against Alec Baldwin and other members of the Rust film crew.”
“No one is above the law while I’m in charge, and everyone deserves justice.”
Luke Nikas, Baldwin’s lawyer, said that putting charges against the actor was “a terrible miscarriage of justice.”
BREAKING: Alec Baldwin to be charged with involuntary manslaughter in fatal Rust shootinghttps://t.co/K7Un6n5hGJ
— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) January 19, 2023
Hutchins was killed when a real bullet from a revolver Baldwin was practising with during filming in New Mexico hit her and also hit movie director Joel Souza, who was hurt but lived.
Prosecutors must show in court that Gutierrez-Reed, who was in charge of all the weapons on set, was the first person to make sure they were safe. They also have to show that Halls, who checked the gun and gave it to Baldwin, was also at fault.
In New Mexico, the penalty for involuntary manslaughter is up to 18 months in prison and a $US7,259 ($10,492) fine. Involuntary manslaughter is a term for killing someone without meaning to.
Baldwin has said that he is not to blame for Hutchins’ death and that live rounds should never have been allowed on the set of the low-budget movie.
He said that someone told him the gun was “cold,” which is a term in the business world for “safe to use.”
Prosecutors in New Mexico have reportedly announced that Alec Baldwin will be charged with involuntary manslaughter after handling the gun which discharged on the set of Rust in October 2021, killing the film's cinematographer. pic.twitter.com/S34kvnMiN2
— IGN (@IGN) January 19, 2023
In a 2021 interview with US network ABC News, the actor said that he did not pull the trigger of the replica Pietta.45-caliber long Colt revolver, but that it went off when he cocked it while practising camera angles with Hutchins.
The single-action revolver “worked normally” and would not fire without pulling the trigger, according to an FBI forensic test.
The main focus of the investigation into Hutchins’ death was how live rounds got onto a movie set and how they were put into a gun.
Last year, Ms. Carmack-Altwies hired a special prosecutor and got $460,000 from the state to pay for what she thought would be high-profile, expensive jury trials if charges were filed.
“Halyna Hutchins would still be alive if any of these three people—Alec Baldwin, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, or David Halls—had done their jobs,” said Andrea Reeb, the special prosecutor in the case.
The agency found that Rust Move Productions knew that gun safety rules weren’t being followed and didn’t care about the risks.
