[ad_1]
Hilaria Baldwin put on a brave face as she emerged from her New York City apartment to take some of her kids to school today while awaiting a decision on her husband Alec’s fate.
Santa Fe prosecutors have announced they will charge Baldwin with involuntary manslaughter. The same charge will be filed against armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed.
Assistant Director Dave Halls will plead guilty to negligent use of a deadly weapon as part of a plea deal. He will serve no jail time. Baldwin and Hannah Gutierrez-Reed are facing a maximum of 18 months in prison.
There was no sign of the actor himself this morning but Hilaria, glamorous as ever, put on a stoic display.
Wearing a faux-fur bomber jacket, her signature leather-look workout leggings, and oversized sunglasses, the mother-of-seven finished her look with a pair of $300, pearl and rhinestone-encrusted slippers from Spanish brand Alameda Turquesa.
Hilaria Baldwin emerges from her NYC apartment on Thursday while awaiting a decision from Santa Fe prosecutors on whether her husband, Alec, will be charged over the Rust shooting
Hilaria emerges with two of her children to take them to school on Thursday morning
Baldwin, 39, hopped into a waiting SUV with her two sons
Baldwin has stood by her husband since the fatal accident in October 2021
She was dripping in diamonds, and clutched her cellphone in one hand with a coffee cup.
Mary Carmack-Altwies, the District Attorney for New Mexico‘s first judicial district, said in September that Baldwin and three others could be charged in connection with the fatal accident.
Baldwin, who starred in and produced low-budget film Rust, was named alongside armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, assistant director Dave Halls and local prop shop owner Seth Kenney.
All four have been described as playing crucial roles in the run-up to the firing of the prop gun, which killed 42-year-old Halyna Hutchins and injured director Joel Souza.
Hilaria was dripping in diamonds for the early morning school drop-off
Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was shot and killed on October 21, 2021, while filming in New Mexico
Baldwin is seen on October 21, 2021, after speaking to investigators about the fatal shooting
Hutchins’ October 19, 2021 Instagram post showed cast members and staffers, including Baldwin alongside Hutchins herself and armorer Gutierrez-Reed (circled left to right) on the set of Rust in Santa Fe, New Mexico
The set of Rust, at the Bonanza Creek Ranch outside of Santa Fe
Baldwin was holding the gun, which was given to him by Gutierrez-Reed.
New Mexico District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies said Baldwin would face an involuntary manslaughter charge for the death of the cinematographer
Halls told Baldwin the gun was ‘cold’ – not loaded with live ammunition.
Kenney had supplied Gutierrez-Reed with some of the equipment.
Baldwin in October settled a lawsuit filed in February by Hutchins’s husband Matthew, her young son and the personal representative of her estate.
They accused Baldwin and the other defendants of reckless conduct and cost-cutting measures that endangered the crew, including failing to follow basic industry standard safety checks and gun safety rules.
The case was settled for an undisclosed sum, and production resumed – with Souza returning as director, and Matthew Hutchins working as an executive producer.
The production of Rust was also moved from New Mexico to California, under the agreement.
ALEC BALDWIN: FIRED DEADLY WEAPON
The 64-year-old Oscar-nominated actor was photographed immediately after the shooting, bent over in agony as Hutchins fought for her life.
He has said he was given the gun by Halls, who pronounced it ‘cold’.
Baldwin was discussing a gunfight sequence with crew members at the Bonanza Creek Ranch, and unholstered a .45 revolver, raising it in the direction of a camera, where Souza and Hutchins were standing.
He insists he did not pull the trigger.
Alec Baldwin spoke to George Stephanopoulos in an interview which aired on December 2, 2021
Baldwin wept as he described accidentally shooting dead his cinematographer on the set of his film Rust during an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos
On December 2, 2021, he gave an emotional interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, in which he said he did not pull the trigger, and felt no guilt because he believed he had done nothing wrong.
‘I let go of the hammer, bang. The gun goes off. Everyone is horrified. They’re shocked. It’s loud,’ he said.
He told Stephanopoulos he didn’t know she’d died until hours later, at the end of his police interview when he was photographed in the sheriff’s parking lot in Santa Fe.
He said he had been told by people ‘in the know’ it was ‘highly unlikely’ he’d face criminal charges.
‘Someone is responsible for what happened, and I can’t say who it is, but it’s not me,’ Baldwin told Stephanopoulos.
‘Honest to God, if I thought I was responsible I might have killed myself. And I don’t say that lightly.’
Baldwin also described in detail for the first time the immediate aftermath of the accident on October 21.
He was filming a scene inside a church on the set of the movie when the gun was handed to him.
‘She’s getting me to position the gun – everything is at her direction. I draw the gun, to her marker. I’m not shooting to the camera lens, I’m shooting just off. In her direction. This was a completely incidental shot, that may not have ended up in the film.’
Baldwin says he cocked the gun, and was discussing with Hutchins how it looked on camera.
‘I’m just showing. I go, “How ’bout that? Does that work? You see that? Do you see that?” And then she goes, “Yeah, that’s good.”‘
He said he was stunned when the gun fired, and initially could not understand what had happened.
‘No one was – the gun was supposed to be empty. I was told I was handed an empty gun. If they were cosmetic rounds, nothing with a charge at all, a flash round, nothing.
‘She goes down, I thought to myself, “Did she faint?” The notion that there was a live round in that gun did not dawn on me ’til probably 45 minutes to an hour later.’
He added: ‘Well, she’s laying there and I go, “Did she get hit by wadding? Was there a blank?” Sometimes those blank rounds have a wadding inside that packs, it’s like a cloth that packs the gunpowder in. Sometimes wadding comes out, it can hit people, and it could feel like a little bit of a poke.
‘But no one could understand. Did she have a heart attack? Because remember the idea that someone put a live bullet in the gun was not even in reality.’
‘I never pulled the trigger. No, no, no. You would never do that.’
Halls, the assistant director who was watching, confirmed Baldwin’s account, through his lawyer.
He said he stood over her for ‘about 60 seconds’ and was then ushered out.
‘Was she conscious?’ Stephanopoulos asked.
‘My recollection is yes,’ said Baldwin.
He said ‘no one had any idea’ there was live ammunition used until a police officer showed a photo of the shrapnel removed from Souza’s arm.
He said then began ‘the agony, insanity, that someone put a live bullet in the gun.
‘She was laying there and she was there for a while.
‘I was amazed at how long they didn’t get her in a car or get her out, but they waited until a helicopter came,’ he said.
‘And by the time the helicopter took off with her we were literally all glued to that process outside.
‘When she finally left, I don’t know how long she was there for.
‘She kept saying, she’s stable, just as you disbelieve there was a live round in the gun, you disbelieve its going to be a fatal accident.
‘At the end of my interview with the sheriff’s department, they told me, “We regret to inform you she didn’t make it,” they told me then and there.’
He added: ‘That’s when I went outside and called my wife.’
A devastated Baldwin is pictured bent over outside the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s office after speaking to investigators
To this day, he insists he did not pull the trigger – yet an FBI report into the shooting, published in August 2022, contradicts Baldwin’s claim.
‘With the hammer at a quarter and half cock positions, the revolver could not be made to fire without the pull of the trigger,’ the document states.
Also, with the hammer only pulled back to those partial positions, ‘there was not enough force to detonate the primer in either circumstance.’
The FBI concluded that Baldwin had to have pulled the trigger – something he still denies.
He told Chris Cuomo in an interview for his podcast days after the report was published: ‘The only question here is who put a live round in the gun.’
He added: ‘The man who is the principal safety officer of the set of the film declared the gun was safe when he handed it to me.
‘The man who was the principal safety officer of the film declared in front of the entire assemblage, “This is a cold gun.” Now, why did he say that if he didn’t know and hadn’t checked? The point is we were told “everything was cool” and “you can relax” and “we are working with a gun that is safe to rehearse with.”
He added: ‘What is likely is that someone who was responsible for one situation or one line of responsibility and the other person — a tandem of the two people — one of them or both were negligent.’
In November 2022, a 551-page sheriff’s report was published, which detailed the investigators’ struggle to obtain Baldwin’s phone in the aftermath of the shooting.
Baldwin’s attorneys initially refused their request, insisting they needed a warrant from New York, where Baldwin lives.
By the time that was obtained, several weeks had passed.
The final data extraction was not completed until August 17, 2022, and investigators found, to their surprise, no record of calls or messages on the day of the October 21 shooting, or even the day after.
Baldwin’s attorney Luke Nikas said that there were no calls or messages because they were between Baldwin and his wife Hilaria, and deemed privileged. Equally, messages between Baldwin and his attorney were not submitted.
They did, however, find a message from Baldwin two days after the shooting, sent to his assistant, Jonah Foxman, which states: ‘I have to delete my archive.’
Nikas said the comment was about Baldwin’s Twitter archive, after a PR consultant recommended he delete his old tweets to avoid re-sharing of anything that could be taken out of context and used against him.
HANNAH GUTIERREZ-REED: IN CHARGE ON GUNS ON SET
The 25-year-old armorer of the film has been singled out by some for her inexperience.
The daughter of veteran Hollywood armorer Thell Reed, Gutierrez-Reed was hired by Baldwin’s production team as lead armorer in what was only her second ever time in the role.
Gutierrez-Reed grew up on Hollywood sets, often tagging along with her father, a former Marine, who served as Brad Pitt’s gun coach on The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
Hannah Gutierrez Reed, 25, is the daughter of veteran armorer Thell Reed
Gutierrez Reed was only in her second role as lead armorer when the accident happened
Gutierrez Reed is pictured at a a Mad Max Post-Apocalyptic Photo Meet in 2018
Thell Reed was a bodyguard and ‘drinking buddy’ of Evel Knievel, who worked as a trick shooter on a Gene Autry road show and once made $50,000 at a one-on-one Texas shootout.
He was also a quick draw expert on Django Unchained, and Gutierrez-Reed has said her favorite childhood memory was visiting the set of the 2007 film 3:10 to Yuma when she was around 10.
Gutierrez Reed has hired Jason Bowles, a former federal prosecutor, to represent her
As armorer, she was in charge of the guns on the set.
She has expressed astonishment that live ammunition could end up on set, and has accused the prop master who supplied her with sabotage.
In August, her lawyer Jason Bowles said she was angry investigators had not tested the bullets on set for fingerprints.
They replied that, because the same material was used in dozens of film sets, it would not tell them anything.
But Gutierrez-Reed insists the bullets were deliberately placed in her prop kit.
‘The primary question in this case from the beginning has been where did the live rounds that ended upon the Rust set come from?’ said Bowles.
‘As can be seen from the attached emails, the Sheriff’s office made a conscious decision not to pursue this question at all by refusing to ask the FBI to test any of the rounds for fingerprints or DNA. We now know for certain there were live rounds on set.’
SETH KENNEY: PROP SHOP OWNER
Kenney worked with Gutierrez-Reed to provide the props, and his Albuquerque shop, PDQ Arm and Prop, was searched by investigators in November 2021.
The investigators wanted to examine live rounds Thell Reed said the supplier had once used to train actors at a shooting range.
Hutchins, 42, was pronounced dead in hospital in New Mexico following the October 21, 2021 accident
Yet they appear to have cleared Kenney of involvement.
‘The chemistry testing revealed all the powder in these cartridges were uniform, however did not match the cartridges collected on the set of Rust,’ the report says.
A box of dummies he supplied to the set was also found to be clear of any live ammunition.
In February 2022, he denied responsibility for the shooting.
‘Mr Kenney never handled any of the weapons or ammunition on set, and never provided any direction or guidance to the actors, and was not responsible for the on-set handling of firearms or ammunition,’ his lawyers said in a statement.
‘These activities, including loading guns and verifying that no live rounds were brought onto set, were the responsibility of the film’s Armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed.’
There appears to be little love lost between Gutierrez-Reed and Kenney.
In May 2022, Kenney told his local news channel, KOAT, that Gutierrez-Reed had once, on a different set, wanted to fire live ammunition out of a prop gun.
‘She wanted to shoot live ammo out of the guns, the TV movie guns,’ Kenney said.
‘I said no f****** way obviously. And then she acknowledged.’
Gutierrez-Reed’s lawyer, Bowles, said his client’s job was to understand the weapons: he said she asked Kenney for advice, and listened.
DAVE HALLS: ASSISTANT DIRECTOR WHO HANDED BALDWIN GUN
Halls, 55, is known for his work as an assistant director on The Matrix: Reloaded, and Fargo.
He handed Baldwin the gun – and the movie star claims Halls told him it was ‘cold’.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Halls told police he could not recall how thoroughly he checked the weapon.
‘David advised when Hannah showed him the firearm before continuing rehearsal, he could only remember seeing three rounds,’ he told detectives, according to an affidavit filed in Santa Fe County Magistrate Court.
‘He advised he should have checked all of them, but didn’t, and couldn’t recall if she spun the drum.’
Halls, an experienced assistant director, is pictured on the set of Rust, outside Santa Fe in New Mexico
Halls (pictured) was working on the set of Rust as the assistant director, and handed Alec Baldwin the gun that then killed camerawoman Halyna Hutchins
An aerial view of the Bonanza Creek Ranch in Santa Fe, where the movie was being filmed
Halls confirmed Baldwin’s claim that he never pulled the trigger.
Following the shooting, some former colleagues of Halls claimed he had previously ignored safety protocols.
Maggie Goll, an IATSE Local 44 prop maker and licensed pyrotechnician, said in a statement to CNN that while working on Hulu’s Into the Dark in February and May of 2019, Halls neglected to hold safety meetings and consistently failed to announce the presence of a firearm on set to the crew, as is protocol.
She also claimed Halls complained about additional checks necessary for a scene in which an actress put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger.
Another colleague, Quinton Rodriguez, worked with Halls on the set of Civil War drama Freedom’s Path.
He claimed that a gun accidentally fired, terrifying everyone on set and causing Halls to lose his job on the production.
‘A lot of his mentality was just, ‘Get the shot. And get the shot on time,’ claimed Rodriguez.
‘He seemed willing to cut whatever corners were necessary to make that happen.’
In December, Halls countersued Baldwin, amid an increasingly complex web of litigation.
‘[Halls] continues to contend that he is in no way actionably liable for the events and occurrences … alleged in Plaintiff’s operative complaint,’ Halls’ attorney wrote in his complaint.
‘He’s supposed to check the guns, he’s responsible’: Panicked 911 calls from Alec Baldwin tragedy reveal how script supervisor blamed assistant director for death of cinematographer – but why did ANY of the guns have live ammo?
The audio recordings of 911 calls made by the crew of Alec Baldwin’s film Rust have revealed desperate attempts to save their colleague, and allegations of negligence.
Mamie Mitchell, the script supervisor of the film, made the call after Baldwin accidentally shot cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, 42, and director Joel Souza, 48.
The group were filming the Western film in the desert outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, when the tragedy happened on October 21.
In her call, Mitchell, a veteran script supervisor with credits dating back to 1974, points the finger at the assistant director, accusing him of negligence.
Mitchell calls 911 and tells the woman answering: ‘We need an ambulance out at Bonanza Creek Ranch right now. We have had two people accidentally shot on a movie set accidentally.’
While she is on the phone, Mitchell is instructing another person to ‘clear the road’ to allow the ambulance easy access to the site.
Mitchell is then transferred to the Santa Fe fire and EMS, and, sounding panicked, urges a swift response.
‘Bonanza Creek ranch. We have had two people accidentally shot on a movie set by a prop gun.
‘We need help immediately. Bonanza Creek ranch. Come on.’
David Halls is the Assistant Director of Rust, the Western movie Baldwin was acting in and producing when he accidentally killed Hutchins and wounded director Joel Souza
The 911 operators then asks Mitchell for her details.
Mitchell, who has worked on films including No Country For Old Men, Sicario and 3:10 to Yuma, can be heard saying: ‘It sounds like somebody else is calling for ambulances.
‘Everybody should be. We need some help.
‘Our director and our camerawoman has been shot.’
She then asks someone on set: ‘Are they going to take him to the road?’
The 911 operator asks: ‘So, was it loaded with a real bullet or what?’
Mitchell replies: ‘I don’t, I cannot tell you that. We have two injuries from a movie gunshot.’
While the phone operator is inputting the details, Mitchell can be heard telling someone else: ‘OK, this f****** AD that yelled at me at lunch asking about revisions, this motherf*****.
‘Did you see him lean over my desk and yell at me? He’s supposed to check the guns. He’s responsible for what happened.’
According to a search warrant filed in a Santa Fe court, the gun was one of three that the film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez, had set on a cart outside the wooden structure where a scene was being acted.
Assistant director Dave Halls grabbed the gun from the cart and brought it inside to Baldwin, unaware that it was loaded with live rounds, a detective wrote in the search warrant application.
It is not known whether Mitchell was referring Halls in the audio.
It was unclear how many rounds were fired. Gutierrez removed a shell casing from the gun after the shooting, and she turned the weapon over to police when they arrived, the court records say.
On the call, the 911 operator tries to ask Mitchell how many people were injured and, confused, Mitchell replies: ‘No, no, I’m a script supervisor.’
The operator asks again, and Mitchell says: ‘Two that I know of. I was sitting there rehearsing and it went off and I ran out. We all went out there, but doubled over the camerawoman and the director.’
She tells another person: ‘They are clearing the road, can you go back – back in the town, back in the Western camp.’
The operator asks if there is any serious bleeding, and Mitchell, flustered, hands the phone over to a man.
‘Hello?’ the man says.
‘Hi, I have a protocol of questions I need to ask. If you could answer them as best you can,’ the 911 operator says. ‘Are they completely alert?’
The man replies: ‘Yes, they are alert.’
The operator asks if the bleeding is controlled, and the man replies: ‘Let’s see if I’m allowed to get closer… No.’
It is unclear if he is saying that the bleeding is not controlled, or that he is not able to get closer.
‘We’ve got one laying down,’ he tells the operator, adding that they are near gate one and have a van ready to escort the ambulances quickly to the precise spot.
A devastated Baldwin is pictured bent over outside the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s office after speaking to investigators
A woman then calls back saying: ‘Hi, I am calling back from Bonanza Creek Ranch. We actually need two ambulances not one.’
The operator replies: ‘OK, so we’re doing a call now for somebody else and we’ll get two up to you.’
The woman, her voice showing the strain, replies: ‘OK. And that’s 10 to 15 minutes?’
‘I don’t know – we’re getting them right now, to you now,’ the operator replies.
‘What? What?’ the woman says, sounding panicked as she speaks to someone else.
‘We have two ambulances heading your way.’
‘What?’ the woman says, then returns speaking to the operator: ‘OK, thank you.’
The operator replies: ‘You’re welcome, bye.’
Mitchell later said she was standing next to Hutchins when she was shot.
‘I ran out and called 911 and said ‘Bring everybody, send everybody,’ Mitchell told The Associated Press.
‘This woman is gone at the beginning of her career. She was an extraordinary, rare, very rare woman.’
Mitchell said she and other crew members were attending a private memorial service in Santa Fe.
Baldwin described the killing as a ‘tragic accident.’
‘There are no words to convey my shock and sadness regarding the tragic accident that took the life of Halyna Hutchins, a wife, mother and deeply admired colleague of ours. I’m fully cooperating with the police investigation,’ Baldwin wrote on Twitter.
‘My heart is broken for her husband, their son, and all who knew and loved Halyna.’
No immediate charges were filed, and sheriff’s spokesman Juan Rios said Baldwin was permitted to travel.
‘He’s a free man,’ Rios said.
[ad_2]
Source link
