OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
The walls are starting to close in on actor Alec Baldwin.
The district attorney who has been investigating the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of Baldwin’s movie “Rust,” Mary Carmack-Altwies, said that a decision on whether or not anyone faces charges could be announced on Thursday, Fox News reported.
“Regardless of the District Attorney’s decision, the announcement will be a solemn occasion, made in a manner keeping with the office’s commitment to upholding the integrity of the judicial process and respecting the victim’s family,” a spokesperson for the district attorney, Heather Brewer, said.
Hutchins died when a gun actor Alec Baldwin was holding fired while practicing a scene on Oct. 21, 2021. The group had been rehearsing in a small church on the Bonanza Creek Ranch set.
Baldwin has maintained that he did not pull the trigger of the gun — once during a primetime interview shortly following the deadly shooting and again on a podcast episode. The actor originally said he had pulled the hammer of the gun back as far as he could and released it, but did not pull the trigger.
The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Department has spent the last year investigating how live rounds made it onto the movie set. Armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed and assistant director Dave Halls were the only other crew members believed to have handled the gun that fired on set.
As many as four people, including Baldwin, could potentially face charges in the shooting death of Halyna Hutchins, the Santa Fe County District Attorney’s Office said, The New York Times reported in September.
The district attorney’s office speculated on the possible charges in a request to state officials late last month that asked for additional funding to cover the costs that would be incurred if charges were brought, which would result in several high-profile trials.
While the district attorney, Mary Carmack-Altwies, made it clear in her funding request that her office had not yet decided whether to bring charges — “If charges are warranted,” she began one sentence — the funding request also went into greater detail than she has in the past, noting that her office could charge up to four people.
A document attached to the funding request said, “One of the possible defendants is well-known movie actor Alec Baldwin.”
In September, after denying he had pulled the trigger of the gun, the FBI found that Baldwin fired the gun that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injured director Joel Souza in October 2021, ABC News reported.
The actor has insisted that he did not pull the trigger, but the report said that there was no way the bullet could have been fired if the trigger was not pulled.
With the hammer in the quarter- and half-cock positions, the gun “could not be made to fire without a pull of the trigger,” the report stated.
With the hammer fully cocked, the gun “could not be made to fire without a pull of the trigger while the working internal components were intact and functional,” the report stated.
With the hammer de-cocked on a loaded chamber, the gun was able to detonate a primer “without a pull of the trigger when the hammer was struck directly,” which is normal for this type of revolver, the report stated.
In December 2021 Baldwin, in his first interview after the fatal shooting on the set of the film “Rust”, tearfully denied that he was the one who pulled the trigger.
“She was someone who was loved by everyone who worked with and liked by everyone who worked with and admired. … I mean, even now, I find it hard to believe that. It just doesn’t seem to seem real to me,” Baldwin, crying, began in an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos as he recalled the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, for which he had been blamed.
“You haven’t said much in public since that tragic accident. Why speak out now? I think the big question, and the one you must have asked yourself a thousand times, how could this have happened. You’ve described it as a one in a trillion shot, and the gun was in your hand. How do you come to terms with that?” Stephanopoulos asked.
“It didn’t seem real to me,” Baldwin said after being asked “how this happened” and saying that the script did not call for him to pull the trigger.
“Well, the trigger wasn’t pulled. I didn’t pull the trigger,” said the actor. After being asked to clarify, he added, “No, no, I would never point a gun at anyone and pull the trigger at them.”
“What did you think happened? How did a real bullet get on that set?” the interviewer pressed in a teaser video.
“I have no idea. Someone put a live bullet in a gun, a bullet that wasn’t even supposed to be on the property,” Baldwin answered.
“How do you respond to actors like George Clooney who say that every time they were handed a gun, they checked it themselves,” Stephanopoulos asks.
