Alec Baldwin expects no charges over fatal movie set accident
LOS ANGELES: American actor Alec Baldwin said he doesn’t think anyone will be criminally charged in the fatal shooting on the set of the Western movie “Rust,” telling CNN he hired a private investigator to assess culpability in the tragedy. .
Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins died after being hit by a live blast from a gun Baldwin was holding while rehearsing on the low-budget film’s New Mexico set last October.
A criminal investigation into the shooting is still ongoing, and prosecutors have not yet dropped charges against those involved.
“I honestly think… (investigators) are going to say this was an accident. It’s tragic,” Baldwin said in a rare interview about the episode, part of which aired Friday.
Baldwin told CNN that he had replayed the events leading up to the shooting over and over again over the past 10 months.
While insisting he doesn’t want to “condemn” Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the film set’s gunsmith and prop assistant, Baldwin pointed the finger of guilt at her and assistant director Dave Halls, who handed him the gun moments before. of the shooting
“Somebody put a real bullet in the gun who should have known better,” Baldwin said.
“That was (Gutierrez-Reed’s) job. His job was to look at the ammo and put the dummy ammo or the blank ammo, and there wasn’t supposed to be any real ammo on set.
“There are two people who didn’t do what they were supposed to do,” he added.
“I’m not sitting there saying I want them to, you know, go to prison, or I want their lives to be hell.
“I don’t want that, but I want everyone to know that those are the two people responsible for what happened.”
multiple lawsuits
Baldwin, who was both the star and producer of “Rust,” has been the subject of a number of civil lawsuits over the shooting, including from the Hutchins family.
He previously said he was told the gun did not contain live ammunition, that Hutchins had instructed him to point the gun in his direction, and that he did not pull the trigger.
But a recent FBI forensic report concluded that the gun could not have been fired “without pulling the trigger.”
Meanwhile, Gutierrez-Reed sued the film’s ammunition supplier, accusing him of leaving real bullets among the dummy cartridges.
On Thursday, his attorney criticized the FBI for not conducting DNA or fingerprint tests to establish who had handled the live bullets found on the set.
“It is inconceivable that the sheriff would not seek answers to this critical question and raises a serious issue with the entire investigation,” Jason Bowles said in a statement.
After Baldwin’s last interview, attorneys for both Gutierrez-Reed and Halls told CNN that the actor was trying to deflect blame from himself.
Baldwin also used the CNN interview to address former US President Donald Trump’s public suggestion that he may have killed Hutchins on purpose.
Last year, Trump said in a podcast that Baldwin, who frequently impersonated the president and ridiculed him on “Saturday Night Live,” was a “troublesome guy,” suggesting he “maybe loaded” the gun.
Baldwin told CNN that as a result, he was concerned that some of Trump’s supporters would “come and kill me.”
“Here was Trump, who instructed people to commit acts of violence, and he was pointing his finger at me and saying that I was responsible for the death,” Baldwin said.
“There’s just this torrent of people attacking me who don’t know the facts.
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