United States actor Alec Baldwin said he does not believe anyone will be criminally charged over the fatal shooting on the set of Western film “Rust,” telling CNN he has hired a private investigator to assess culpability for the tragedy.
Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins died after being hit by a live round that came from a gun Baldwin was holding as he rehearsed on the New Mexico set of the low-budget movie last October.
A criminal investigation into the shooting is still ongoing, and prosecutors have not yet ruled out charges against those involved.
“I sincerely believe… (investigators are) going to say that this was an accident. It’s tragic,” said Baldwin in a rare interview about the episode, a portion of which was aired Friday.
Baldwin told the Cable News Network (CNN) he had replayed the events leading up to the shooting over and over for the past 10 months.
While insisting he does not want to “condemn” Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the film set’s armorer and props assistant, Baldwin pointed the finger of blame at her and assistant director Dave Halls, who handed him the gun moments before the shooting.
“Someone put a live bullet in the gun who should have known better,” Baldwin said.
“That was (Gutierrez-Reed’s) job. Her job was to look at the ammunition and put in the dummy round or the blank round, and there wasn’t supposed to be any live rounds on the set.
“There are two people who didn’t do what they were supposed to do,” he added.
“I’m not sitting there saying I want them to, you know, go to prison, or I want their lives to be hell.
“I don’t want that, but I want everybody to know that those are the two people that are responsible for what happened.”
– Multiple lawsuits –
Baldwin, who was both the star and a producer of “Rust,” has been the subject of a number of civil lawsuits over the shooting, including from Hutchins’s family.
He has previously said he was told the gun contained no live ammunition, had been instructed by Hutchins to point the gun in her direction, and did not pull the trigger.
But a recent FBI forensic report concluded that the gun could not have been fired “without a pull of the trigger.”
Meanwhile, Gutierrez-Reed has sued the film’s ammunition supplier, accusing him of leaving real bullets among the dummy cartridges.
On Thursday, her lawyer criticized the FBI for failing to carry out DNA or fingerprint testing to establish who had handled the live rounds found on set.
“It is inconceivable that the sheriff would not seek answers to this fundamental question and it raises a serious problem with the entire investigation,” said a statement from Jason Bowles.
Following Baldwin’s latest interview, lawyers for both Gutierrez-Reed and Halls told CNN that the actor was trying to deflect blame away from himself.
Baldwin also used the CNN interview to address former US President Donald Trump’s public intimation that he could have killed Hutchins on purpose.
Trump last year told a podcast that Baldwin — who frequently impersonated and ridiculed the president on “Saturday Night Live” — was a “troubled guy,” suggesting that “maybe he loaded” the gun.
Baldwin told the network he was consequently worried that some of Trump’s supporters would “come and kill me.”
“Here was Trump, who instructed people to commit acts of violence, and he was pointing the finger at me and saying I was responsible for the death,” said Baldwin.
“There is just this torrent of people attacking me who don’t know the facts.”
