Rust (Movie)

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      Family of Slain ‘Rust’ Cinematographer Weighs Wrongful-Death Lawsuit

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      Lawyers for the family of Halyna Hutchins, the cinematographer fatally shot by Alec Baldwin on the set of the movie “Rust” last year, filed a petition this week to appoint a representative for Hutchins’s estate who will consider whether to file a wrongful-death lawsuit.Ms. Hutchins was killed when the old-fashioned revolver Mr. Baldwin was practicing with on the film set in New Mexico, which he had been told did not contain live ammunition, fired a live bullet, hitting her and the movie’s director, Joel Souza, who survived.According to the petition, which was filed in state court in New Mexico on Wednesday, lawyers for Ms. Hutchins’s widower and son asked the court to appoint Kristina Martinez, a lawyer in Santa Fe, to represent the cinematographer’s estate “solely for the purpose of investigating and pursuing a lawsuit under the New Mexico Wrongful Death Act.” The court filing did not specify who would be named as a defendant should a lawsuit be filed.Ms. Hutchins’s widower, Matthew Hutchins, and her 9-year-old son both support the petition to name a representative of Ms. Hutchins’s estate, the filing said.Randi McGinn, a lawyer representing the Hutchinses, said the process of appointing a representative was specific to a state law in New Mexico. Under the statute, any money granted in the lawsuit would be split between Mr. Hutchins and his son, she said.Ms. Hutchins, who was 42 and originally from Ukraine, was an up-and-coming cinematographer whom friends described as talented, spirited and deeply committed to her work.In the aftermath of the deadly shooting on Oct. 21, several members of the film’s crew have filed lawsuits against Mr. Baldwin and others associated with the production. Mr. Baldwin, who was starring in the western and was also a producer on it, asserted in a television interview that he was not responsible for the fatal shooting and said that he had not pulled the trigger, suggesting that the gun could have gone off after he pulled back the hammer. His lawyers filed a motion on Monday calling for a lawsuit filed against him by the film’s script supervisor, Mamie Mitchell, to be dismissed.Officials in New Mexico are still examining how a live bullet got on set and then into the gun that Mr. Baldwin was practicing with and whether anyone should be held criminally responsible. More

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      Alec Baldwin Seeks Dismissal of ‘Rust’ Lawsuit

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      Lawyers for the actor Alec Baldwin and other producers behind the film “Rust” filed a motion on Monday seeking to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the movie’s script supervisor, who was feet away from the actor on the movie set in New Mexico when he fatally shot a cinematographer.The script supervisor, Mamie Mitchell, said in her lawsuit, filed last year, that she was standing nearby when the gun fired a live bullet that killed the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, and wounded the film’s director, Joel Souza. Mitchell then ran out of the wooden church set that had been the backdrop for the scene and called 911.The lawsuit claimed that Ms. Mitchell “sustained serious physical trauma and shock and injury to her nervous system and person” as a result of her proximity to the shooting. It accused Baldwin of “intentionally, without just cause or excuse,” cocking and firing the revolver in a scene that did not call for it.In Monday’s court filing, lawyers for Mr. Baldwin wrote that he could not have intentionally shot a live bullet from the gun because shortly before it discharged, the movie’s first assistant director called out “cold gun,” indicating that the old-fashioned revolver being used as a prop did not contain any live bullets and should have been safe to handle.“It is completely illogical for plaintiff to contend defendant Mr. Baldwin received a prop gun that everyone including plaintiff and defendant Mr. Baldwin expected to be ‘cold,’ while at the same time stating that Mr. Baldwin’s conduct was intentional in accidentally firing a live round,” the filing said.Mr. Baldwin said in a television interview last year that he did not pull the trigger of the gun while he was practicing on set that day. He said he did not fully cock the hammer of the gun, but pulled it back and let it go in an action that might have set it off.The filing from Mr. Baldwin’s and the production’s lawyers also asserted that Ms. Mitchell’s grievance did not qualify as a complaint under New Mexico’s workers’ compensation law.Ms. Mitchell’s lawsuit targeted the production more broadly for making a series of what she called “cost-cutting measures,” including hiring a 24-year-old armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who was just starting out her career as a lead armorer in the industry. Ms. Gutierrez-Reed’s lawyer has said that she was dedicated to safety on set; she filed her own lawsuit against the film’s supplier of guns and ammunition.The production’s court filing said that Ms. Mitchell’s allegations relied on “a list of things that she contends, in hindsight, should or should not have been done” to ensure safety on set; the production’s lawyers argued that her case was insufficient and should be dismissed. More

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      Alec Baldwin Turns Over His Phone in ‘Rust’ Investigation

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      Detectives investigating the actor’s fatal shooting of a cinematographer on a film set in New Mexico had gotten a search warrant for the phone nearly a month ago.The actor Alec Baldwin turned his phone in to the police in Suffolk County, N.Y., on Friday morning, his lawyer said, starting a process that will allow investigators to collect data related to his fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the set of the film “Rust” last year in New Mexico.Mr. Baldwin agreed to a process in which he would hand over his iPhone and its password, and the phone’s data would be reviewed by officials from the Suffolk County police department and district attorney’s office before the relevant data would be passed to the authorities in New Mexico, according to a search agreement provided by Mr. Baldwin’s lawyer. Mr. Baldwin, who has a home in Suffolk County, handed the phone over to the police himself, his lawyer, Aaron Dyer, said. Juan Rios, a spokesman for the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office, said his office had been notified that the phone was handed over to the authorities in Suffolk County, N.Y.According to the terms of the search agreement, officials in Suffolk County will review the phone’s communications — including texts, emails, call records, voice mail messages, digital images and internet browser history — between June 1 and Dec. 5 last year, and will exclude any communications with his lawyers or his wife, Hilaria, which are protected by privilege.“Mr. Baldwin has a right to privacy regarding the contents of the iPhone, as well as regarding communications with his attorneys and with his spouse, which communications are protected by the attorney-client privilege and the marital communications privilege respectively,” the agreement states..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}The police in Suffolk County are to create a “forensic download” of the iPhone “in its entirety,” according to the agreement, before the device is returned to Mr. Baldwin.The fatal shooting occurred on Oct. 21, while Mr. Baldwin was practicing drawing an old-fashioned revolver from a shoulder holster. He had been told that the gun did not contain any live rounds, but it did, and it discharged a bullet that killed the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, and wounded the movie’s director, Joel Souza. Investigators looking into the shooting, and seeking to determine how a live round got into the gun, secured a search warrant for Mr. Baldwin’s phone on Dec. 16.The agreement to turn over Mr. Baldwin’s phone states that the search warrant is not enforceable in New York — where he lives — and that without Mr. Baldwin’s consent to search the phone, the authorities would be required to seek a separate warrant in the state. To avoid that, the agreement says, Mr. Baldwin has agreed to proceed “as if the NM Warrant had been obtained in New York.”“Alec voluntarily provided his phone to the authorities this morning so they can finish their investigation,” Mr. Dyer said in a statement. “But this matter isn’t about his phone, and there are no answers on his phone. Alec did nothing wrong.”The set of the movie “Rust,” where Halyna Hutchins was fatally shot in October.Jae C. Hong/Associated PressWhile generally limiting their search to communications between June 1 and Dec. 5, officers will be able to access communications with Matthew Hutchins, Ms. Hutchins’s widower, and Santa Fe law enforcement officials from any date, according to the search agreement. It said that Mr. Baldwin had agreed to provide a list of telephone numbers for “individuals and entities connected with the production of the film.” The officials “may only extract call records for calls to or from those numbers during the relevant time period,” according to the agreement.After media outlets reported last week that the Santa Fe authorities did not have Mr. Baldwin’s phone three weeks after the warrant was granted, Mr. Baldwin posted a video on his Instagram account saying that any suggestion that he was not cooperating with investigators was “a lie.” He said that the process would take time and that the authorities “have to specify what exactly they want.”“They can’t just go through your phone and take, you know, your photos or your love letters to your wife or what have you,” Mr. Baldwin said in the video.In a television interview last month, Mr. Baldwin denied responsibility for Ms. Hutchins’s death, saying that he did not know how live rounds got onto the film set and that he did not pull the trigger before the gun went off.Before handing Mr. Baldwin the gun on set, the movie’s first assistant director, Dave Halls, called out “cold gun,” an industry term meaning that a firearm does not have live rounds and is safe to use. Mr. Baldwin said in the interview that Ms. Hutchins had been instructing him on where to point the gun when it discharged.“It is clear that he was told it was a cold gun, and was following instructions when this tragic accident occurred,” Mr. Dyer said in the statement. “The real question that needs to be answered is how live rounds got on the set in the first place.” More

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      Alec Baldwin Will Turn in Phone to Investigators This Week, Lawyer Says

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      The sheriff’s office in Santa Fe said nearly a month had elapsed since a search warrant was issued for the phone, but it had not yet been surrendered.A lawyer for Alec Baldwin said on Thursday that the actor would turn over his cellphone “this week” to authorities investigating his fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the set for the film “Rust,” nearly a month after detectives secured a search warrant for the device.The pledge came hours after the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office — which is investigating the shooting — had released a statement pointedly noting that the warrant had been obtained on Dec. 16 but that “to date, the cellphone has not been turned over to authorities.”Mr. Baldwin’s lawyer, Aaron Dyer, said in a statement that he and his client had reached an agreement with officials in Santa Fe County last weekend regarding the actor’s phone and that they were finalizing logistics with the authorities in New York, where Mr. Baldwin has a home.“Ever since this tragic incident, Mr. Baldwin has continued to cooperate with the authorities, and any suggestion to the contrary is simply untrue,” Mr. Dyer said in the statement. “We requested that the authorities obtain a warrant so that we could protect his privacy on other matters unrelated to ‘Rust’ and have been working through that process.”After media outlets reported last week that investigators did not yet have Mr. Baldwin’s phone, weeks after a judge in New Mexico approved the warrant request, Mr. Baldwin posted a video of himself on Instagram saying he was complying but that the process was taking time. He suggested that he was concerned about maintaining his privacy, saying, “They can’t just go through your phone and take, you know, your photos or your love letters to your wife or what have you.”Officials in Suffolk County, New York, said last week that they were also involved in facilitating the phone’s transfer to the authorities.In a television interview last month, Mr. Baldwin fiercely insisted that he was not to blame in the shooting that killed the cinematographer of the film, Halyna Hutchins, and injured the director, Joel Souza. He said that when the gun went off, he had been practicing drawing it from his shoulder holster and that he had not pulled the trigger; he said he had not fully cocked the hammer of the gun, an old-fashioned revolver, but had pulled it back as far as he could and let it go in an action that might have set it off.Mr. Baldwin said in the TV interview that he did not know how live rounds got on the set of the western, a question at the center of the authorities’ investigation in Santa Fe. More

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      ‘Rust’ Armorer Sues Supplier of Ammunition and Guns for Film Set

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      The lawsuit accuses the supplier of contributing boxes of ammunition that were represented as containing only inert dummy rounds but that included live rounds.The armorer who was tasked with managing weapons for the film “Rust” in New Mexico, where Alec Baldwin fatally shot a cinematographer last year, filed a lawsuit on Wednesday accusing a supplier of guns and ammunition of introducing “dangerous” materials onto the set.In the lawsuit, the armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, said Seth Kenney and his company, PDQ Arm & Prop, had supplied the box — labeled “dummy” rounds — that, in fact, contained at least one live round, which discharged from a gun that Baldwin was practicing with on Oct. 21 of last year. The discharge killed the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, and wounded the movie’s director, Joel Souza.“Hannah and the entire ‘Rust’ movie crew relied on the defendants’ misrepresentation that they provided only dummy ammunition,” according to documents in the suit filed in state court in New Mexico.According to the lawsuit, which named Mr. Kenney and his company, he had worked with Ms. Gutierrez-Reed’s father, Thell Reed, a prominent Hollywood armorer, on a different movie set in Texas about a month or two before the deadly shooting.Mr. Kenney had asked Mr. Reed to help train actors to shoot live rounds at a firing range off-set, the lawsuit said. Afterward, Mr. Kenney took ammunition, including live rounds that Mr. Reed had supplied for the training, it said..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}According to court documents filed by a detective for the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office last year, Mr. Reed has said the live ammunition used on the shooting range could be the same that ended up on the “Rust” set.Ms. Gutierrez-Reed’s lawyers said in the lawsuit that Mr. Kenney and PDQ Arm & Prop of Albuquerque had “distributed boxes of ammunition purporting to contain dummy rounds, but which contained a mix of dummy and live ammunition to the Rust production.”They “knew or should have reasonably believed that the ammunition they supplied to the Rust production would be used in the filming of scenes involving the discharging of firearms,” the filing stated.Mr. Kenney did not immediately respond to a request for comment. His role as a supplier of blanks and dummy rounds to the production, and the question of whether he may have sent live ammunition as well, are already being investigated by law enforcement officials in New Mexico.In November, a warrant was issued to search Mr. Kenney’s business. According to an affidavit in the case, the head of props on “Rust,” Sarah Zachry, told detectives that some of the ammunition had come from Mr. Kenney, while some came from a previous production Ms. Gutierrez-Reed had worked on and “an individual identified as ‘Billy Ray.’”At the time, Mr. Kenney, who has also done business out of Arizona and California, said he was confident he was not the source of any live round.“It is not a possibility that they came from PDQ or from myself personally,” he said in an interview with “Good Morning America,” adding that dummy rounds from his company get individually “rattle tested” before they are sent out (when shaken, dummy rounds will rattle, while live rounds will not).In the latest lawsuit, Ms. Gutierrez-Reed’s lawyers described the actions she took to check that the gun was safe before it was later handed to Baldwin. “Hannah remembered the chamber that she believed needed to be cleaned in Baldwin’s gun and she cleaned it and then Hannah pulled another round from the dummy box, shook it, and placed it in the chamber,” the court papers said. “To the best of Hannah’s knowledge, the gun was now loaded with 6 dummy rounds.”Ms. Gutierrez-Reed’s lawyer has previously said that she did two jobs on the “Rust” set — armorer and props assistant — which made it difficult for her to focus fully on her job as armorer. The lawsuit, which characterized the “Rust” set as having a “rushed and chaotic atmosphere,” noted that Ms. Gutierrez-Reed was to be paid about $7,500 for both jobs combined.Ms. Gutierrez-Reed has been named as one of several defendants in separate lawsuits filed by two “Rust” crew members who asserted that she had failed to follow appropriate safety measures as armorer and that at 24 years old, she was not experienced enough to be overseeing weapons on the set.Mr. Kenney and his company represented that the “props were dummy rounds and safe and effective products for use on a movie set when in fact they were unsafe live rounds and never should have been on a movie set,” Ms. Gutierrez-Reed’s lawyers said in the court papers. More

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      Shooting Investigators Get Search Warrant for Alec Baldwin’s Phone

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      Detectives are nearly two months into the investigation of how a live round got into a gun that discharged on a New Mexico film set, killing a cinematographer.A judge on Thursday granted the police access to Alec Baldwin’s smartphone, nearly two months into the investigation around how a gun he was practicing with on the set of the film, “Rust,” fired a live round, killing the movie’s cinematographer and wounding its director.Mr. Baldwin said in a police interview on Oct. 21, the day of the fatal shooting in New Mexico, that the gun discharged while he was preparing for a scene in which he takes the old-fashioned Colt revolver out of his shoulder holster and cocks the hammer, according to an affidavit filed in the application for the search warrant. Detective Alexandria Hancock asked Mr. Baldwin and his lawyer to hand over his phone, the affidavit said, but was told to obtain a warrant.The application for the search warrant said that the detective “believes there may be evidence on the phone, due to individuals using cellular phones during and/or after the commission of crime(s).” Detective Hancock, according to the affidavit, “was also made aware there were several emails and text messages sent and received regarding the movie production ‘Rust’ in the course of the interviews.”The search is meant to collect “all information and data from the cellular phone in relation to the production of ‘Rust,’ and any member working on the production.”The application said that Mr. Baldwin was brought into an interview room at about 5:12 p.m. the day of the shooting and that he agreed to speak with detectives after being advised of his Miranda rights. “Alec advised in the scene he slowly takes the gun out of the holster, then very dramatically turns it and cocks the hammer, which is when the gun goes off,” it said. “He said it was supposed to be a ‘cold gun’ so no flash charge or anything should have gone off.”In a television interview earlier this month, Mr. Baldwin said he did not pull the trigger of the gun he was practicing with when it fired a live round. He said he did not fully cock the hammer of the gun, but pulled it back as far as he could and let it go in an action that might have set it off.“Someone put a live bullet in a gun, a bullet that wasn’t even supposed to be on the property,” Mr. Baldwin said in the interview with ABC News. “Someone is ​responsible for what happened, and I can’t say who that is, but I know it’s not me.”Mr. Baldwin has been cooperating with investigators in the case; the affidavit said the actor had contacted Detective Hancock “numerous times” by telephone and text messages. A representative for Mr. Baldwin did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the search warrant. More

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      Alec Baldwin Says He Is Not Responsible for Fatal Shooting on ‘Rust’

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      In an emotional interview with ABC News, the actor asserted, ‘Someone put a live bullet in a gun.’The actor Alec Baldwin fiercely insisted he was not to blame in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the set of a Western being filmed in New Mexico, claiming that another person had accidentally placed a live round in the gun that went off in his grasp as he was rehearsing a scene.“Someone put a live bullet in a gun, a bullet that wasn’t even supposed to be on the property,” Mr. Baldwin said in a television interview that was broadcast on Thursday night. “Someone is ​responsible for what happened, and I can’t say who that is, but I know it’s not me.”Mr. Baldwin made the comments in an emotional ABC News interview with George Stephanopoulos, the first time that Mr. Baldwin has publicly given an account of what happened in October. The actor’s description of the episode may cast greater scrutiny on crew members and suppliers and the question of who was responsible for safeguarding firearms in the low-budget production.In the interview, excerpts from which had been released on Wednesday, Mr. Baldwin also said that he did not pull the trigger of the gun he was practicing with on the set of “Rust” when it fired a live round.“I would never point a gun at anyone and pull a trigger at them — never,” Mr. Baldwin said.The fatal shooting took place on Oct. 21 near Santa Fe, N.M., on a movie set designed to be a church. Mr. Baldwin was practicing drawing an old-fashioned revolver that he had been told contained no live rounds when it suddenly fired, killing the film’s cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, 42, and wounding its director, Joel Souza, 48.The cinematographer who was killed, Halyna Hutchins, was mourned in October at a candlelight vigil in Burbank, Calif. Chris Pizzello/Associated PressMr. Baldwin said that he was stunned by what happened and that at least 45 minutes passed after the gun went off before he realized that it could have contained a live round..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“I stood over her for 60 seconds as she just laid there kind of in shock,” Mr. Baldwin said.The actor added that he did not cock the hammer of the gun, but pulled it back as far as he could and let it go in an action that might have set it off. “I let go of the hammer — bang, the gun goes off.”Investigators are seeking to determine how a live round got into the gun that Mr. Baldwin was practicing with, why the crew members who inspected it on set failed to notice, and why the gun fired.Mr. Baldwin’s contention that he had not pulled the trigger was supported by a lawyer for the film’s assistant director, Dave Halls, who had been standing near Mr. Baldwin inside the church set when the gun fired.The lawyer, Lisa Torraco, told the ABC News show “Good Morning America” on Thursday that Mr. Halls had told her that “the entire time Baldwin had his finger outside the trigger guard, parallel to the barrel.” She said Mr. Halls had told her that “since Day 1, he thought it was a misfire.”In the ABC interview, Mr. Baldwin also said he recalled that shortly before the shooting, Mr. Halls had told him, “This is a cold gun,” an industry term implying that firearm does not have live rounds and is safe to use.“When he’s saying, ‘This is a cold gun,’ what he’s saying to everybody on the set is, ‘You can relax,’” Mr. Baldwin said.Mr. Baldwin, who has come under intense criticism after the shooting, has already been questioned by detectives and is cooperating with the investigation. No one has been charged in connection with the shooting, and authorities have not placed blame on any individual.“I got countless people online saying, ‘You idiot, you never point a gun at someone,’” Mr. Baldwin said. “Well, unless you’re told it’s empty and it’s the director of photography who’s instructing you on the angle for a shot we’re going to do.”Some gun experts said it was possible that the gun, a single-action revolver, could have discharged without Mr. Baldwin’s pulling the trigger if he had pulled back the revolver’s hammer and released it before it was fully cocked. But they questioned whether that would have created enough force to fire the live round.Clay Van Sickle, a movie industry armorer who did not work on “Rust,” said guns generally go off only when someone pulls the trigger. “Unless that gun was in a horrible state of disrepair,” he said, “there is no other way that gun could have gone off.”As detectives work to trace the source of the live round, one focus has been on Seth Kenney, who supplied blanks and dummy rounds for the production.According to court documents filed on Tuesday, detectives are trying to determine whether Mr. Kenney sent live ammunition as well as blanks and dummies, and they have searched his business in Albuquerque, PDQ Arm & Prop.Mr. Kenney said in an interview that he was confident he was not the source of any live round.“It is not a possibility that they came from PDQ or from myself personally,” he told “Good Morning America.”Thell Reed, a weapons expert who has worked and consulted on a number of films, has told detectives that he supplied live rounds to Mr. Kenney for training on another film, according to court documents. Mr. Reed, who is the father of Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the “Rust” armorer, suggested they might match live rounds found on “Rust.”The film’s prop master, Sarah Zachry, has told investigators, according to the court documents, that the ammunition on the set had come from “various sources” — from Mr. Kenney, but also from Ms. Gutierrez-Reed, who was said to have brought some from a previous production, and from a person identified only as “Billy Ray.”Since the fatal shooting, two crew members who were in the room when the gun went off have filed separate lawsuits, naming Mr. Baldwin, the film’s producers and other crew members including Mr. Halls and Ms. Gutierrez-Reed as defendants.Both lawsuits say Mr. Baldwin should have checked the gun himself to see whether it was safe to handle. In the interview, Mr. Baldwin said that on the day of the shooting, one of the plaintiffs touched his shoulder and said he bore no responsibility for what happened.Mr. Baldwin declined to say which plaintiff it was. Serge Svetnoy, one of the crew members who filed suit, told ABC that he did say that to Mr. Baldwin but later changed his mind.The actor insisted that the tragedy occurred after he was handed the gun and was told it was safe, and that Ms. Hutchins herself had told him how to position it. Both he and Ms. Hutchins assumed the gun was safe to handle, he said.“I am holding the gun where she told me to hold it,” Mr. Baldwin said. “I can’t imagine I’d ever do a movie that had a gun in it again.”Matt Stevens More

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      Alec Baldwin Says He ‘Didn’t Pull the Trigger’ in ‘Rust’ Killing

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      The actor said in a brief excerpt from an upcoming interview with ABC News that he had not pulled the trigger when the gun he was holding went off, killing the cinematographer.The actor Alec Baldwin said in an upcoming television interview that he did not pull the trigger of the gun he was practicing with on the set of the film “Rust,” which fired a live round as he held it, killing the film’s cinematographer and wounding its director.“I would never point a gun at anyone and pull a trigger at them — never,” Mr. Baldwin told George Stephanopoulos in an ABC News interview that is scheduled to be broadcast Thursday night at 8 p.m. Eastern. The network posted brief excerpts from the interview Wednesday as a preview.The exchange came after Mr. Stephanopoulos noted that it had not been part of the script for the trigger to be pulled in that scene. Mr. Baldwin jumped in: “Well, the trigger wasn’t pulled. I didn’t pull the trigger.”He did not elaborate on why the gun might have gone off in the excerpt ABC provided.Mr. Baldwin’s account adds another layer of mystery onto the fatal shooting, which took place on Oct. 21 on a set of a church near Santa Fe, N.M. Mr. Baldwin was practicing drawing an old-fashioned revolver that he had been told contained no live rounds when it suddenly fired, killing the film’s cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, 42, and wounding its director, Joel Souza, 48.It still remains unclear how a lethal bullet got into the gun that he was practicing with, and why the crew members who handled it before passing it to Mr. Baldwin failed to detect that it contained a live round when it was supposed to have only dummies.In the clip of the interview, Mr. Baldwin said he does not know why a real bullet — which was not even supposed to be on the property — was loaded into the gun. Investigators are trying to determine whether the supplier of blanks and dummy rounds for the movie, Seth Kenney, sent live ammunition as well, according to court documents filed on Tuesday.There have been some suggestions that there may have been a problem with the gun. The armorer for “Rust,” Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, told a detective that she had loaded it with five dummy rounds before lunch, but that “there was one round that wouldn’t go in,” so she cleaned it out after lunch and added a sixth round, according to an affidavit filed Tuesday.In the ABC interview, Mr. Baldwin grew visibly emotional as he spoke about Ms. Hutchins, saying “she was someone who was loved by everyone who worked” with her.“I think back and I think of what could I have done?” Mr. Baldwin said.This is the first time that Mr. Baldwin has given his full account of what happened to the public. Last month, two crew members who were in the room when the gun went off filed separate lawsuits, naming Mr. Baldwin, the film’s producers and other crew members as defendants. Both lawsuits alleged that Mr. Baldwin should have checked the gun himself to see if it was safe to handle. More