Alec Baldwin fired a prop gun on the film’s set in an accident that killed the film’s director of photography and injured its director, officials in New Mexico have said.
A statement from the Santa Fe Sheriff’s Office said Baldwin, who stars in and produced the film Rust, fired a prop gun at an incident Thursday.
Deputies were sent to the set at Bonanza Creek Ranch around 2 p.m. when a 911 caller reported the shooting, the statement said.
The sheriff’s office confirms that two men were shot on the set of Rust. Director of photography Halyana Hutchins, 42, and director Joel Souza, 48, were shot when producer and actor Alec Baldwin, 68, was shot. One prop firearm was discharged,” it said.
“Ms. Hutchins was taken by helicopter to the University of New Mexico Hospital where she was pronounced dead by medical personnel. Mr. Souza was taken by ambulance to Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center where she is being treated for her injuries. “
“This investigation remains open and active. No charges have been filed in connection with this incident.”
Juan Rios from the sheriff’s office said: “Mr Baldwin came voluntarily to talk to investigators and after talking to them he left.”
A Baldwin spokesman said there had been an accident on set that involved a prop gun misfire with Blank.
Santa Fe New Mexican reported that Baldwin was seen in tears outside the sheriff’s office on Thursday, but attempts to obtain comment from him were unsuccessful.
“According to investigators, it appears that the scene being filmed involved the use of a prop firearm when it was discharged,” Rios told the Albuquerque Journal. “Detectives are probing how and what type of projectile was discharged.”
Production has been halted on the film, which was being directed by Souza and starred Baldwin.
Hutchins, 42, was the director of photography on the 2020 action film Arkanemy, starring Joe Manganiello. A 2015 graduate from the American Film Institute, he was named a “rising star” by American cinematographers in 2019.
“I am so sad to lose Halina. And so furious this could happen on a set,” Arkanemy’s director, Adam Egypt Mortimer, said on Twitter. “She was a brilliant talent with a thorough flair for art and film. was committed.”
International Cinematographers Guild President John Lindley and Executive Director Rebecca Raine said in a statement: “Details are unclear at this time, but we are working to learn more, and we support a full investigation of this tragic incident.” “
Tributes have poured in for Hutchins on social media.
“I’ll miss you my friend… it’s devastating,” director James Cullen Bressack wrote under a video Hutchins posted two days earlier. At the time she wrote: “One of the benefits of shooting a western is that you get to ride horses in your day.”
Model Katya Zarkova also said she will “miss Hutchins terribly” while actor Jeff Daniel Phillips described his death as “an absolute tragedy”.
According to a news release from the New Mexico Film Office, filming for Rust was scheduled to continue in early November.
According to the Internet Movie Database website, the film is about a 13-year-old boy who is left to care for himself and his younger brother after the death of his parents in Kansas in the 1880s. After the boy is sentenced to death for the accidental murder of a local rancher, the teenager runs away with his long-estranged grandfather, played by Baldwin.
In 1993, Brandon Lee, the 28-year-old son of the late martial-arts star Bruce Lee, died after being struck by a .44-caliber slug while filming a death scene for the film The Crow. The gun was believed to have fired a blank, but an autopsy showed a bullet near his spine.
with the associated press