The Santa Fe County district attorney said on Tuesday that she was not ruling out criminal charges in last week’s fatal shooting.
“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.”
Ms. Carmack-Altwies said that the investigation was focusing on ballistics in an effort to determine what kind of round was in the gun that killed Halyna Hutchins, the cinematographer — and 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,” Ms. Carmack-Altwies said.
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.”
Ms. Carmack-Altwies took issue with descriptions of the firearm used in the incident as “prop-gun,” saying that the terminology, which is used in some of the court documents related to the case, could give the misleading impression that it was not a real gun.
“It was a legit gun,” she said, without naming specifically what kind of firearm was used. “It was an antique-era appropriate gun.”
Ms. Carmack-Altwies said that she was aware of news reports suggesting that crew members had used guns with live ammunition for target practice hours before the fatal shooting, but said that the reports were “unconfirmed.”
Ms. Carmack-Altwies described the case as one of the most challenging in Santa Fe County in recent memory.
“We have complex cases all the time,” she said. “But this kind of complex case, with these kinds of prominent people, no.”
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
