The live round that was fired by Alec Baldwin on the set of “Rust,” which killed the film’s cinematographer and wounded an assistant director, may have been left accidentally in the gun from a previous film production, according to a search warrant approved by a judge on Tuesday.
“New Mexico investigators revealed the developments in the case as they sought permission to search PDQ Arm & Prop, LLC — an ammunition store in an Albuquerque strip mall that supplied the ill-fated Western with props, according to documents shared with The Post by the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office,” the New York Post reported. “The warrant also said the weapon could have been supplied by a man identified only as ‘Billy Ray.’”
Baldwin killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, 42, and wounded assistant director Joel Souza, 48, on October 21.
According to the warrant, investigators searched a prop truck after learning there was “additional ammunition collected of which some are suspect live ammunition.” PDQ Arm & Prop’s Seth Kenney told police the ammunition included “dummy rounds and blanks.”
A week after the fatal shooting, Baldwin retweeted an article by The New York Times. “Before he handed a revolver that he had declared ‘cold’ to Alec Baldwin on the set of the film ‘Rust,’ Dave Halls, an assistant director, told a detective he should have inspected each round in each chamber, according to an affidavit. But he did not,” read the original tweet.
The actor also retweeted an article headlined, “Alec Baldwin Was Told Prop Gun Was Safe Before Fatal Shooting, Affidavit Says.”
New Mexico authorities held a news conference and released a warrant that laid out what occurred. “Dave Halls allegedly told investigators that typically he would ‘check the barrel for obstructions,’ and then armorer Hannah Reed-Gutierrez ‘opens the hatch and spins the drum,’ before he yells out ‘cold gun’ on set. But before the tragic Oct. 21 shooting, Hall said he ‘could only remember seeing three rounds’ of dummy bullets in the chamber,” The Daily Beast reported.
“He advised he should have checked all of them, but didn’t, and couldn’t recall if she spun the drum,” the warrant said, according to the Beast. “After the shooting, Halls said they opened up the gun and found four dummy rounds and one spent live round.”
“He advised he could only remember seeing at least four dummy casings with the hole in the side, and one without the hole,’ the warrant says. ‘He advised this round did not have the ‘cap’ on it and was just the casing. David advised the incident was not a deliberate act.’”
Baldwin also shared a lengthy string of social media posts written by a crew member of the Western movie, who blasts co-workers for describing the New Mexico set as “chaotic and unsafe.”
“Read this,” Baldwin wrote about the multiple Instagram posts penned by Terese Magpale Davis, who worked in the wardrobe department for the movie.
“I am so sick of this narrative,” Davis wrote. “I worked on this movie. The story being spun of us being overworked and surrounded by unsafe, chaotic conditions is bull***t. We never worked more than a 12.5 hour shoot day. That was once,” Davis wrote. “Most days were under 12. The day Halyna died we had come off of a 12 hour turnaround after an 11 hour shoot day. We had (including camera) gotten off by 6:30pm.”
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Source: Dailywire
