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Audio recordings of the 911 calls from the set of the movie “Rust,” where actor Alec Baldwin accidentally shot and killed a woman and injured a man, have been uncovered.
The calls reveal a panicked crew attempting everything they could to save the lives of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, 42, and director Joel Souza, 48, The Daily Mail reported.
Mamie Mitchell, the script supervisor of the film, made the 911 call for help.
“We need an ambulance out at Bonanza Creek Ranch right now. We have had two people accidentally shot on a movie set accidentally,” she said on the call.
As she is talking to the 911 operator she instructs someone else to make certain the ambulance has access to the road.
“Bonanza Creek ranch. We have had two people accidentally shot on a movie set by a prop gun,” she said. “We need help immediately. Bonanza Creek ranch. Come
“It sounds like somebody else is calling for ambulances,” the operator said.
“Everybody should be. We need some help,” Mitchell said. “Our director and our camerawoman has been shot.”
She then asks someone on set: ‘Are they going to take him to the road?’
The 911 operator asks: ‘So, was it loaded with a real bullet or what?’
Mitchell replies: ‘I don’t, I cannot tell you that. We have two injuries from a movie gunshot.’
While the phone operator is inputting the details, Mitchell can be heard telling someone else: ‘OK, this f****** AD that yelled at me at lunch asking about revisions, this motherf*****.
‘Did you see him lean over my desk and yell at me? He’s supposed to check the guns. He’s responsible for what happened.’
According to a search warrant filed in a Santa Fe court, the gun was one of three that the film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez, had set on a cart outside the wooden structure where a scene was being acted.
Assistant director Dave Halls grabbed the gun from the cart and brought it inside to Baldwin, unaware that it was loaded with live rounds, a detective wrote in the search warrant application.
It is not known whether Mitchell was referring Halls in the audio.
Mitchell was asked by the 911 operator how many people were injured in the shooting.
“Two that I know of. I was sitting there rehearsing and it went off and I ran out. We all went out there, but doubled over the camerawoman and the director,” she said.
Baldwin issued a statement after the shooting, and after photos showed distraught and inconsolable after the tragedy.
“There are no words to convey my shock and sadness regarding the tragic accident that took the life of Halyna Hutchins, a wife, mother and deeply admired colleague of ours. I’m fully cooperating with the police investigation,” he said on Twitter.
“My heart is broken for her husband, their son, and all who knew and loved Halyna,” he said.
The police believe that the gun was loaded with a real bullet or part of a real bullet rather than the blanks it was supposed to be armed with.
“There should have been blanks in the gun, the on-set armorer’s job is to check that before handing the weapon over,” Mike Tristan, 60, a Hollywood armorer with three decades of experience, said.
“They then make sure that the actor stands on a mark and never points the gun at the crew or cast… the editing makes it seem like they were pointing at their co-actor,” he said.
‘That’s why everyone in the industry is very confused,” he said. “How this happened is a total mystery at the moment.”
Director James Cullen Bressack said after the tragedy that he will never use blanks on the set of any of his movies again.
“I will never use anything but airsoft and rubber guns on my movies ever again. This should never have happened. Halyna, you were a gem,” he said. “This is so f****d up.”
