Now Baldwin is sued by family of movie worker he shot dead on set
THE family of a cinematographer shot dead by Alec Baldwin on a film set are suing the actor and the movie’s producers for wrongful death.
Their ‘reckless conduct and costcutting measures’ were to blame for Halyna Hutchins’ killing, lawyers said yesterday.
The lawsuit – filed in the name of her husband Matthew and their nine-yearold son Andros – was announced at a news conference. At least three other lawsuits have been filed over the incident on the set of Rust in New Mexico in October last year, but this is the first directly linked to one of the two people shot.
Mrs Hutchins, 42, was killed when the gun used by Baldwin during a rehearsal for a scene in the western fired a real bullet. The director, Joel Souza, was wounded.
Baldwin, 63, has said he was pointing the gun at Mrs Hutchins at her instruction and it went off without him pulling the trigger.
But the family’s attorney Brian Panish said yesterday that Baldwin had turned down training for the kind of gun draw he was doing when he shot her. And he said industry standards call for a rubber or similar prop gun in that kind of scene.
In January Baldwin turned over his mobile to authorities in his home state of New York.
They gathered information from the phone then gave it to Santa Fe County investigators, who had obtained a warrant for it.
Investigators have described ‘some complacency’ in how weapons were handled on the set. They have said it is too soon to determine whether charges will be filed.
But Baldwin has said he does not believe he will be criminally charged.
The film’s script supervisor and its lead camera operator, both of whom were standing a few feet away when Mrs Hutchins was shot, each filed a lawsuit over the trauma they went through.
And the film’s armourer Hannah Gutierrez Reed, who was named as a defendant in those, filed her own lawsuit saying an ammunition supplier created dangerous conditions by including live rounds in a box that was supposed to include only dummy rounds.
In December, Baldwin said he felt incredible sadness over the shooting – but not guilt. ‘Someone is responsible for what happened, and I can’t say who that is, but it’s not me,’ he said.
‘I didn’t pull the trigger,’ he said. ‘I would never point a gun at anyone and pull the trigger at them. Never.’
He called Mrs Hutchins ‘somebody who was loved by everybody and admired by everybody who worked with her’.