Criminal Charges Still Possible in Alec Baldwin Shooting Incident

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• The producers of “Rust” hired lawyers after the Sante Fe County district attorney told The New York Times that “everything at this point, including criminal charges, is on the table.”
• Officials said the investigation could take weeks or months.
• According to documents, an assistant director handed the gun to Baldwin, who rehearsed a scene by “cross drawing” a revolver and pointing it toward the camera lens.

The Santa Fe County district attorney said Tuesday that she was not ruling out criminal charges in the fatal shooting on Alec Baldwin’s  “Rust” movie set.

“We haven’t ruled out anything,” the district attorney, Mary Carmack-Altwies, said in a telephone interview. “Everything at this point, including criminal charges, is on the table.”

Carmack-Altwies said that the investigation was focusing on ballistics to determine what kind of round was in the firearm that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. There’s also the question on who had placed the ammunition in the gun.

“There were an enormous amount of bullets on this set, and we need to find out what kinds they were,” Carmack-Altwies said.

Detectives said that they recovered three revolvers, spent casings and ammunition while executing a search warrant on the film set.

Carmack-Altwies took issue with descriptions of the firearm used in the incident as “prop-gun.” She said that the terminology could give the misleading impression that it was not a real gun.

“It was a legit gun,” she said, without identifying what type of firearm was used. “It was an antique-era appropriate gun.”

Detectives from the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office are proceeding carefully with the investigation, she said, citing the large number of witnesses and the need to methodically collect ballistics and forensics evidence.

According to affidavits included in applications for search warrants, Dave Halls, an assistant director on the set, had gone outside the church and taken the gun off a cart, where it had been placed by the film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed. Halls handed the gun to Baldwin, who was rehearsing inside the church, according to the affidavit, and said it was a “cold gun,” indicating that it contained no live rounds and was safe for Baldwin to handle.

Baldwin then rehearsed a scene that involved “cross drawing” a revolver and pointing it toward the camera lens, according to the affidavit, when the gun fired — striking Hutchins in the chest and killing her, and hitting the director of the film, Joel Souza, in the shoulder, wounding him.

Detectives are still interviewing people who were on the set, Ms. Carmack-Altwies said. “It’s probably weeks, if not months, of follow-up investigation that we’re going to need to get to the point of charging.”

Source: The New York Times