A prop gun discharged by Alec Baldwin killed a film crew member on set, sheriff says

[Michie]

SANTA FE, N.M. — The director of photography on a movie starring Alec Baldwin has been killed and the film's director injured, according to the sheriff's office of Santa Fe County, N.M. They were shot by a prop firearm that was discharged by Baldwin, who is also a producer on the film, the sheriff's office statement says.

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A prop gun discharged by Alec Baldwin killed a film crew member on set, sheriff says

 

[Michie]

Lord have mercy.

 

[prodromos]

Rule number one. Never point a gun at anyone unless you actually want to do them harm.

 

[Michie]

Alec Balwin shares his grief after accidentally killing cinematographer with live bullet | Daily Mail Online

 

[Palmfever]

In what world does any responsible adult point a real gun at someone for fun? He’s a fool and guilty. Though he is a liberal anti gun actor, so maybe we shouldn’t expect much common sense.

Never point any gun at someone without checking it first. Why the two directors and not the actor he was in a confrontation with? He was horsing around. Idiot.

 

[Michie]

Production crew walked off Alec Baldwin movie set hours before tragic shooting | Daily Mail Online

 

[chevyontheriver]

Production crew walked off Alec Baldwin movie set hours before tragic shooting | Daily Mail Online

Alec was good in 'Hunt For Red October'. He got some sage advice about gun handling in that movie from Sean Connery in the missile room. Didn't take I guess.

 

[Michie]

‘Cold gun!' shouted Halls before handing the gun to Baldwin, using the phrase to signal to cast and crew that the gun was safe to fire for the scene, the warrant said.

Seconds later, filming a scene inside an Old West-style church, Baldwin apparently aimed towards the camera and pulled the trigger, accidentally killing Hutchins as she filmed him, and injuring director Joel Souza, who stood behind her.

The gun that fired the fatal shot was a vintage-style Colt revolver, DailyMail.com has exclusively learned. The movie, set in 1880's Kansas, stars Baldwin as the infamous outlaw Harland Rust, whose grandson is sentenced to hang for an accidental murder.

A call sheet from the set identified the armorer's name as Hannah Gutierrez Reed, according to the Wall Street Journal. Gutierrez-Reed, 24, is the daughter of legendary Hollywood armorer and firearms consultant Thell Reed, who trained her from a young age, she said in a recent podcast interview.

She said in the podcast that she had recently completed her first film as head armorer on The Old Way, starring Nicolas Cage. 'I almost didn’t take the job because I wasn’t sure if I was ready, but doing it, it went really smoothly,' she said in the interview last month.

Halls is a veteran assistant director with scores of credits on productions involving prop guns, including Fargo, The Matrix Reloaded, and the TV cop comedy Reno 911.

In 2000, Halls was the second unit's first assistant director on The Crow: Salvation, the sequel to the film in which Bruce Lee's son Brandon Lee was killed in an on-set firearms mishap in 1993.

Neither he nor Gutierrez-Reed immediately returned messages from DailyMail.com late on Friday. Neither has been charged or named as a criminal suspect in the case, though a police investigation is ongoing.

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Production crew walked off Alec Baldwin movie set hours before tragic shooting | Daily Mail Online

 

[Stabat Mater dolorosa]

Wierd story...

 

[prodromos]

Alec Baldwin is the producer of the movie as well as the lead actor. It sounds like they had been cutting a lot of corners to keep the budget down. Safety protocols weren't followed.

 

[Wolseley]

In what world does any responsible adult point a real gun at someone for fun? He’s a fool and guilty. Though he is a liberal anti gun actor, so maybe we shouldn’t expect much common sense.

Never point any gun at someone without checking it first. Why the two directors and not the actor he was in a confrontation with? He was horsing around. Idiot.

My understanding is, he was pointing the weapon at the camera because they wanted to record the flash of the shot for the movie. If the weapon had been loaded with a blank, it would have been fine. He wasn't fooling around with it, it was a staged shot for the picture.

Secondly, most actors don't know squat about firearms---it is the job of the armorers and the safety people on any given production to make sure the weapon is safe to fire before they hand it to an actor before a scene. In this particular case, somebody failed to do that. A weapon that had not been properly cleared was given to Baldwin to point at the camera and fire, and tragedy ensued.

Somebody messed up, yes; but I don't believe it was Baldwin who was at fault.

 

[Stabat Mater dolorosa]

My understanding is, he was pointing the weapon at the camera because they wanted to record the flash of the shot for the movie. If the weapon had been loaded with a blank, it would have been fine. He wasn't fooling around with it, it was a staged shot for the picture.

Secondly, most actors don't know squat about firearms---it is the job of the armorers and the safety people on any given production to make sure the weapon is safe to fire before they hand it to an actor before a scene. In this particular case, somebody failed to do that. A weapon that had not been properly cleared was given to Baldwin to point at the camera and fire, and tragedy ensued.

Somebody messed up, yes; but I don't believe it was Baldwin who was at fault.

I'm european and know squat about firearms, but based on the article and others like it I share your take on the situation. It sounds like Baldwin was tricked by someone elses incompetance.

 

[Wolseley]

I'm european and know squat about firearms, but based on the article and others like it I share your take on the situation. It sounds like Baldwin was tricked by someone elses incompetance.

I grew up around guns---shotguns and rifles, for hunting purposes. In the military, I handled everything from automatic rifles to grenade launchers to heavy machine guns. After the military, I went into law enforcement and security, and carried an automatic pistol on my hip for years.

All those weapons had one thing in common: they were all dangerous if you didn't know what you were doing with them. I saw a young airman on a machine gun range open the feed-tray cover of an M-60 machine gun one day without properly clearing the weapon first. There was a live round still left in the chamber, and it discharged, blowing backwards and hitting him in the throat. He survived, but the round destroyed his larynx and they had to release him from the service.

Moral: it is impossible to be too careful around firearms. Whoever sat those weapons out for Baldwin to use should have broken every one of them open and checked the loads to make sure they were blanks, and sighted down the barrels to make sure there were no objects, rounds, or obstructions in the barrel. All of that should have been done FIRST, before Baldwin ever laid a finger on any of them. Baldwin has a degree of innocence here---he's an actor and shouldn't be expected to know a lot about weapons; the blame for this tragedy rests squarely on the armorers and the prop department.

 

[Michie]

• Experts say that Alec Baldwin and the Rust crew ignored several critical gun safety rules that could have avoided the tragic death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the movie set Thursday
• Zak Knight, a pyrotechnic and special effects engineer, said there's no reason a gun should pointed at another person and that live ammunition should never be on a movie set
• Baldwin tweeted a Variety article on Friday that he 'was told prop gun was safe before fatal shooting'
• Hutchins' husband shared a touching tribute to his wife following her tragic death on Thursday
• Matthew Hutchins posted sweet a photo of his wife with their 9-year-old son Andros on Twitter captioned: 'Halyna inspired us all with her passion and vision, and her legacy is too meaningful to encapsulate in words'
• Armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed and assistant director Dave Halls were named in a search warrant on Friday
• 'Cold gun!' shouted Halls, a veteran assistant director who worked on Fargo and The Matrix Reloaded
• When Baldwin pulled the trigger, a bullet was fired, killing the cinematographer and injuring the director
• In an interview, Gutierrez-Reed said she wasn't sure if she was ready to be a head armorer
• Meanwhile, troubling reports highlight safety concerns on the set of Baldwin's Western film, Rust
• Production crew on the set of Rust walked out on Thursday morning in a row over safety and long hours
• On Thursday, when they arrived to pack up, they found a team of non-union workers waiting to replace them
• Hutchins decided to stay on the set and film with Alec Baldwin and the film director Joel Souza

Alec Baldwin ignored the golden rule of gun safety and it should never have been loaded | Daily Mail Online

 

[Michie]

Father of Halyna Hutchins refuses to blame Baldwin, says it was the fault of movie armoury team | Daily Mail Online

 

[Andrei D]

Zak Knight, a pyrotechnic and special effects engineer, said there's no reason a gun should pointed at another person and that live ammunition should never be on a movie set

This. I can't find any explanation for that. Why would that gun ever be loaded with live ammo? Makes no sense. Especially since it was a special vintage piece, not a modern gun. One could argue they would use live ammo to record sound, but that should be done at a completely different time and in a different place, a sound studio, not on the set. And the truth is no movie uses the actual (remarkably boring, after leveling) sound of a firearm, but different, more exciting sounds.

So the only explanation I can think of for the physical presence of live ammo anywhere around that gun, other than foul play, is that they liked to fool around in between (film) shoots and plink bottles or something for fun with the amazing Colt. If that is the case, they're all idiots.

 

[chevyontheriver]

This. I can't find any explanation for that. Why would that gun ever be loaded with live ammo? Makes no sense. Especially since it was a special vintage piece, not a modern gun. One could argue they would use live ammo to record sound, but that should be done at a completely different time and in a different place, a sound studio, not on the set. And the truth is no movie uses the actual (remarkably boring, after leveling) sound of a firearm, but different, more exciting sounds.

So the only explanation I can think of for the physical presence of live ammo anywhere around that gun, other than foul play, is that they liked to fool around in between (film) shoots and plink bottles or something for fun with the amazing Colt. If that is the case, they're all idiots.

Or maybe to shoot at snakes, but that is a rather benighted view of the poor reptiles, who do not have to be shot on sight.

 

[Andrei D]

Or maybe to shoot at snakes, but that is a rather benighted view of the poor reptiles, who do not have to be shot on sight.

Snake shot rounds are better for that anyway... And may have saved that poor cinematographer's life.

 

[Wolseley]

Apparently members of the crew were using the same weapon for target shooting off-set. And apparently somebody never bothered to unload it, and it got placed back in the same storage space with the unloaded / blank loaded weapons:

US outlet TMZ is reporting the gun was more than a prop - it was allegedly being used by Rust crew members for target practice away from the movie set with real bullets. Live bullets were also reportedly found by police being stored in the same place near blanks.

Alec Baldwin ‘broke the No.1 gun safety rule’ before Rust shooting after being handed gun ‘used with LIVE bullets’ | 7NEWS

 

[Michie]

Alec Baldwin pointed gun at camera when the weapon fired during rehearsal | Daily Mail Online