Crew member sues Alec Baldwin, others over ‘Rust’ shooting
LOS ANGELES (AP) —The head of lighting on the film “Rust” filed a lawsuit Wednesday over Alec Baldwin’s fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the New Mexico set of the Western, alleging negligence that caused him “severe emotional distress” that will haunt him forever.
Serge Svetnoy said in the suit that the bullet that killed his close friend Hutchins, narrowly missed him, and he held her head as she died.
“They should never, ever, have had live rounds on this set,” Svetnoy’s attorney Gary A. Dordick said at a news conference Wednesday.
The lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court names nearly two dozen defendants associated with the film including Baldwin, who was both star and a producer; David Halls, the assistant director who handed Baldwin the gun; and Hannah Gutierrez Reed, who was in charge of weapons on the set.
It is the first known lawsuit of what could be many stemming from the Oct. 21 shooting, which also injured “Rust” director Joel Souza.
It was the ninth film that Svetnoy and
Hutchins had worked on together, and he had taken the job at low pay because she asked him to.
“She was my friend,” Svetnoy said at the news conference.
He said he had seen guns sitting unattended in the dirt a few days earlier in the shoot, and had warned the people responsible about them.
On the day of the shooting, he was setting up lighting within 6 or 7 feet (2 meters) of Baldwin, the suit says.
“What happened next will haunt Plaintiff forever,” the suit says. “He felt a strange and terrifying whoosh of what felt like pressurized air from his right. He felt what he believed was gunpowder and other residual materials directly strike the right side of his face.”
Then, with his glasses scratched and his hearing muffled, he knelt to help Hutchins, the suit said.
The lawsuit seeks both compensatory and punitive damages to be determined later. It was filed in Los Angeles County because the plaintiff and most of the defendants are based there.
Attorneys and representatives for the defendants did not immediately respond to email and phone messages seeking comment on the suit.