Alec Baldwin fatally shoots woman with prop gun on set of new movie Rust - victim named as Halyna Hutchins
The woman who died has been named as Halyna Hutchins - a 42-year-old director of photography. A spokesman for Baldwin, who is producing and starring in the film Rust, said there was an accident involving the misfire of a prop gun with blanks.
Friday 22 October 2021 16:56, UK
A woman has died and a man has been injured after actor Alec Baldwin discharged a prop firearm on the set of new Western movie Rust.
The woman has been named as Halyna Hutchins, a 42-year-old director of photography, and the injured man is Joel Souza, the film's director.
Who was Halyna Hutchins? Tributes to 'brilliant' cinematographer killed on film set
What other fatal accidents have happened on movie sets?
Hutchins was transported via helicopter to University of New Mexico Hospital, but was later pronounced dead.
Souza was taken by ambulance to Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center, but has since been discharged, actress Frances Fisher said.
The shooting happened on the film set in New Mexico, Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office said.
Mr Baldwin has been questioned by police and a sheriff spokesman said he willingly provided a statement.
A spokesman for Baldwin, who is producing and starring in the film, said there was an accident involving the misfire of a prop gun with blanks.
Juan Rios, a spokesman for the sheriff's office, said: "This investigation remains open and active. No charges have been filed in regard to this incident. Witnesses continue to be interviewed by detectives."
He added that detectives are investigating how and what type of projectile was discharged.
Former army officer and firearms instructor Ben Simmons said: "A thought should be spared also for the actor who discharged the firearm because that is something he's going to have to live with for the rest of his life - when these things happen they are awful."
He added: "The film industry uses a variety of weaponry, ranging from the completely inert totally safe, totally fake weapons that are constructed, built from rubber or from wood, all the way up through real guns that are deactivated so they can't discharge a shot.
"Further up the chain to real firearms, so when you want to produce the recoil and the flash and the reaction of the actors to a real gun you use a real gun with blanks.
"You usually can't fire a blank from a fake or a prop gun, you have to use a real gun and there are some that are purposely built to only fire blanks but 95 times out of 100 you will be using a real gun."
He said blanks "are not perfectly safe" but are much safer than a real round of ammunition, but added there should "never" be live ammunition on a film set, and a firearm should never be pointed directly at someone.
Police responded to the set at the Bonanza Creek Ranch at about 2pm local time, following emergency calls of a person being shot there.
Rust's production has been halted and the company making the film said it is providing counselling services to everyone connected with it.
Two days ago, Ms Hutchins posted a picture on Instagram showing Rust's film crew on the set.
The Santa Fe New Mexican reported that Baldwin, 63, was seen Thursday outside the sheriff's office in tears but refused to comment.
Hutchins was named a "rising star" by American Cinematographer magazine in 2019 and was director of photography on the 2020 action film Archenemy, starring Joe Manganiello.
"I'm so sad about losing Halyna," said Archenemy director Adam Egypt Mortimer on Twitter. "And so infuriated that this could happen on a set.
"She was a brilliant talent who was absolutely committed to art and to film."
Actor Joe Manganiello, who starred in Archenemy, called her "an incredible talent" and "a great person" on his Instagram account, adding that he was lucky to have Hutchins as director of photography on the film.
Director and writer James Gunn, who worked on films such as Guardians of the Galaxy and Slither, said on Twitter: "My greatest fear is that someone will be fatally hurt on one of my sets. I pray this will never happen.
"My heart goes out to all of those affected by the tragedy today on Rust, especially Halyna Hutchins & her family."
American filmmaker Elle Schneider wrote on Twitter: "Sick and devastated to hear that my friend and rockstar cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was killed on set today in New Mexico. I don't have words to describe this tragedy. I want answers. I want her family to somehow find peace among this horrific, horrific loss.
"Halyna was shooting the Western RUST when she died. Women cinematographers have historically been kept from genre film, and it seems especially cruel that one of the rising stars who was able to break through had her life cut short on the kind of project we've been fighting for."
Rust, which was due to keep filming until November, is about a 13-year-old boy who is left to fend for himself and his younger brother after his parents' death in 1800s Kansas, according to the Internet Movie Database.
The teenager is sentenced to hang for accidentally killing a local rancher and goes on the run with his long-estranged grandfather, played by Alec Baldwin.
This is not the first high-profile death involving a prop gun on set.
Brandon Lee, son of the late martial-arts star Bruce Lee, died while filming a death scene for the movie The Crow in 1993 when he was 28 years old.
The .44-caliber weapon used was supposed to fire a blank but an autopsy revealed that a bullet was lodged near his spine.
A Twitter account run by Lee's sister Shannon said: "Our hearts go out to the family of Halyna Hutchins and to Joel Souza and all involved in the incident on 'Rust.' No one should ever be killed by a gun on a film set. Period."
In the case of Brandon Lee, Mr Simmons said a "piece of dummy ammunition was used on a previous take, so a close up shot of the actor loading up the gun.
"So dummy ammunition looks exactly the same as real ammunition, but obviously shouldn't contain anything on the inside, any explosive power.
"The tip of it, the bullet itself, which is essentially just a lump of metal, its nothing smart that detached from the dummy round and got lodged in the barrel of the gun.
"The gun then went into storage for a few weeks and it came out. They put a blank round in behind it and when it was fired the blank round did what it should do and it forced the bullet out of the end of the gun and unfortunately into Brandon Lee.
"So when these things happen they are extremely rare, they are normally a case of two, three maybe four, problems that were all happening at the same time - rather than just one mistake."
In 1984, actor Jon-Erik Hexum was pretending to play Russian roulette with a .44 Magnum on the set of the television series Cover Up when he shot himself in the head with a prop gun blank and died.