Names and faces
■ A movie director who was shot by Alec Baldwin during a movie rehearsal — and survived — testified Friday at trial that he was approaching the cinematographer when he heard a loud bang and felt the bullet’s impact. “It felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to my shoulder,” said Joel Souza, who was wounded Oct. 21, 2021, by the bullet that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. Souza never filed a complaint but was called to testify as prosecutors pursue charges of involuntary manslaughter and tampering with evidence against movie weapons supervisor Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who maintains her innocence. Baldwin, the lead actor and co-producer on “Rust,” was separately indicted by a grand jury last month. He has pleaded innocent and a trial is scheduled for July. Work after lunch started with positioning a camera in preparation for an extreme close-up take of Baldwin drawing a gun from a holster inside a makeshift church. “I got up behind her just to try to see on the monitor, and there was an incredibly loud bang,” Souza said. Defense attorney Jason Bowles pressed Souza to remember whether the script explicitly called for Baldwin to point the gun toward the camera, where he and Hutchins were standing. “For that specific shot, it was literally supposed to be the gun being pulled out sideways,” Souza said. Prosecutors say Gutierrez-Reed is to blame for bringing live ammunition on set and she flouted basic safety protocols for weapons. Defense attorneys say it wasn’t Gutierrez-Reed’s decision to leave. Souza said he only recalled seeing Gutierrez-Reed after he was shot. “I remember her saying, ‘I’m sorry,’” Souza said. “I remember somebody just screaming at her and they just ushered her out.’”
■ Government ministers said Prince Harry could use confidential documents that show payments by the publisher of the Daily Mail to private investigators who allegedly snooped on him. The Duke of Sussex, Elton John, Elizabeth Hurley and others claim that Associated Newspapers Ltd. hacked their phones or used other unlawful means to spy on them. Justice Matthew Nicklin in November had rejected the newspapers’ effort to throw out the case. Ledgers showing payments to private eyes that had been leaked to Harry’s legal team from a government inquiry into phone hacking could only be used with the newspapers’ permission or by an order from the judge who oversaw the 2011-12 probe or the government ministers who had ordered the inquiry, Nicklin said. Associated Newspapers, which firmly denies the allegations, refused to turn over the documents and opposed the government releasing them. A joint statement Friday by the home and culture secretaries said the documents could be used in the court case. Associated Newspapers said it would not comment on the decision.