Actor Alec Baldwin, star of such blockbuster films as “The Hunt for Red October,” “Glengarry GlenRoss,” “Pearl Harbor” and “The Ghosts of Mississippi,” was seen in tears by members of the press in New Mexico after a shooting on the set of his new movie “Rust” Thursday that left a cinematographer dead and its director wounded, multiple media outlets are reporting.
Fox News reported that authorities said Baldwin, 63, fired a prop gun on the movie set that killed cinemaphotographer Halyna Hutchins and wounded director Joel Souza. A spokesperson for Baldwin said the accident on the set involved a prop gun with blanks. A spokesperson for the local sheriff’s department, Juan Rios, said detectives were “investigating how and what type of projective was discharged” from the gun.
No charges have been filed from the incident. Production on the film has been halted.
“The investigation remains open and active,” Rios said in a statement. “Witnesses continue to be interviewed by detectives.”
A 2015 graduate of the American Film Institute, Hutchins worked as director of photography on the 2020 action film “Archenemy,” starring Joe Manganiello,” Fox New reported. She was named a “rising star” by American Cinemaphotographer in 2019.
Hutchins, 42, was airlifted to the University of New Mexico Hospital, where she was pronounced dead by medical personnel. Souza, 48, was taken by ambulance to Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center, where he is undergoing treatment.
The Associated Press reported that “prop guns fire blanks, gunpowder charges that produce a flash and a bang but not a hard projectile. But when the trigger is pulled, the paper or plastic wadding is ejected from the barrel with enough force that it can be lethal at close range,” as proved to be the case in the death of actor Brandon Lee, son of Bruce Lee, in 1993. Lee was killed after a bullet was left in a prop gun. {eoa}
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