Baldwin deflects blame, expects no charges over gun accident

In a rare interview regarding the tragic gun accident on the set of his film “Rust” which left the cinematographer dead, Alec Baldwin deflected blame and said he didn’t believe anyone would be criminally charged over the incident. The accident happened when a prop gun that Baldwin was to fire toward the camera somehow was loaded with live ammunition which injured director Joel Souza and killed Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.

Multiple lawsuits have been filed over the incident and prosecutors in the criminal investigation aren’t ruling out charges against anyone but Baldwin has faith that it will be considered a tragic accident and not anything malicious. Nevertheless, he hired an investigator to judge his possible liability in the shooting. Baldwin said in an interview with CNN yesterday he relives the shooting that took place last October on the set of his Western film in New Mexico again and again in his head.

Baldwin was starring in and producing the low-budget Western film, and as such may bear some responsibility, if not as the actor who fired the weapon in the fatal shooting, then as the producer overseeing a string of security failures that lead up to the shooting. Several civil lawsuits, including one from the deceased cinematographer’s family, are pending now, and there is anger and frustration all around.

The actor claimed he did not pull the trigger, but FBI forensics determined the trigger had to have been pulled. Regardless, Baldwin maintains he was handed the gun seconds earlier and informed there was no live ammunition inside, as there should not have been any live rounds on set anyway.

In the interview, Baldwin shifts between saying he doesn’t think anyone should bear the legal blame for the accident, and saying that it was assistant director Dave Halls and armourer and props assistant Hannah Gutierrez-Reed’s fault.

Gutierrez-Reed’s job was to ensure that there were no live rounds on set and to make sure the prop gun only had blanks inside. She is currently suing the ammunition supplier for the movie, claiming he left live bullets mixed in with the blanks. She criticised the FBI for not doing fingerprinting or DNA tests on the ammunition to see who handled the bullets.

It was Halls that handed the gun to Baldwin, moments before the accident. Baldwin said he wanted to make it clear that those two had failed in their jobs to ensure the safety of the gun he handled.

“Someone put a live bullet in the gun who should have known better. Her [Gutierrez-Reed’s] job was to look at the ammunition and put in the dummy round or the blank round, and there wasn’t [sic] supposed to be any live rounds on the set. Two people didn’t do what they were supposed to do… I want everybody to know that those are the two people that are responsible for what happened.”

SOURCE: Bangkok Post