Alec Baldwin and Hannah Gutierrez-Reed will be charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter for the 2021 fatal shooting on the New Mexico set of the film “Rust,” according to officials on Thursday.
Santa Fe First Judicial District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies and special prosecutor Andrea Reeb announced their decision Thursday morning in a written statement shared with the media.
First assistant director David Halls has already agreed to plead guilty to the charge of negligent use of a deadly weapon.
“After a thorough review of the evidence and the laws of the state of New Mexico, I have determined that there is sufficient evidence to file criminal charges against Alec Baldwin and other members of the ‘Rust’ film crew,” Carmack-Altwies said in a statement. “On my watch, no one is above the law, and everyone deserves justice.”
In the news: Video Recreation Released Of Alec Baldwin Shooting Halyna Hutchins, As Family Files Lawsuit
Carmack-Altwies’ office said in October she would conduct a “thorough review of the information and evidence to make a thoughtful, timely decision about whether to bring charges” following a yearlong sheriff’s investigation into the on-set shooting.
Halyna Hutchins, 42, was working as a cinematographer on the Western when she was shot and killed by the film’s star, Alec Baldwin, during an accident while he was practicing using a Colt .45 revolver on set.
Director Joel Souza was also injured in the shooting.
Halyna Hutchins’ Family
In February 2022, the family of Halyna Hutchins released a video recreation, that is animated, showing Alec Baldwin shooting the cinematographer on the set of the movie Rust.
The video shows Baldwin sitting in a church on the movie set, aiming a Colt .45 in Hutchins’ direction, and pulling the trigger, with Hutchins, 42, falling to the ground with the help of two other people.
Halyna Hutchins’ family is suing actor and producer Alec Baldwin and producers of the film Rust, on whose set she was shot and killed in October.
Attorney Brian Panish, representing her husband Matthew Hutchins and their son, Andros, announced he and his firm filed a wrongful death lawsuit in New Mexico for “reckless behavior and cost-cutting” that caused Hutchins to lose her life.
The suit states that Baldwin and the other producers “failed to perform industry-standard safety checks and follow basic gun safety rules while using real guns to produce the movie Rust, with fatal consequences.”
“I didn’t pull the trigger,” Baldwin told ABC News at the time. “I would never point a gun at anyone and pull the trigger at them. Never.”
“Someone is responsible for what happened, and I can’t say who that is,” Baldwin told ABC News in the interview. “But I know it’s not me.”
The wrongful death suit states, “Halyna Hutchins deserved to live, and the Defendants had the power to prevent her death if they had only held sacrosanct their duty to protect the safety of every individual on a set where firearms were present instead of cutting corners on safety procedures where human lives were at stake, rushing to stay on schedule and ignoring numerous complaints of safety violations.”
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