OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Actor Alec Baldwin is not going to get any help from a recently shared video of what he said hours after the shooting on the set of his movie “Rust.”
Body camera footage shared by the The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office along with crime scene photos, interviews with witnesses and text messages shows more of what Baldwin’s involvement was in the shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins after the gun that was in Baldwin’s hands fired and hit her.
Baldwin has said, since the incident, that he held the gun and cocked the gun but that he “did not pull the trigger.”
“Someone is responsible for what happened, and I can’t say who that is, but it’s not me,” he said after the shooting.
But the new footage reveals greater detail of what happened on the day of the shooting in October.
Baldwin ask’s the sheriff’s deputy if he is being charged with anything, but the deputy maintains that is simply asking questions after Baldwin had been read his Miranda rights.
And then the actor admits to firing the gun.
“When I shot the gun, away from the cameraman, I never aim the gun at the camera, I turned and I went like this,” he said as he shaped his finger like a gun and made a gesture as to what he did, Fox News reported. “And she was there. And the gun went off. And she just went right on the ground.”
“I take the gun out slowly. I turn and cock the pistol. Bang! [Hutchins] hits the ground, she goes down. [Souza] goes down, screaming, he’s like ‘Jesus Christ,’” the actor said. “It’s supposed to be a cold gun … Now this is a puzzle to me … this is making me very emotional.”
“Hannah handed me the gun,” he said in reference to Hannah Gutierrez Reed, the on-set armorer.
Video taken by police on the same day also showed Baldwin making calls to other people and some of what he said could be overheard.
“You have no idea how unbelievable this is and how strange this is,” he said during a phone call.
“I don’t want to be a public person,” he said in the video. “I’m the one holding a gun in my hand that everyone was supposed to have taken care of.”
The actor’s attorney, Luke Nikas, said the actor and his team welcome the investigation by law enforcement.
“The information that has been revealed by the authorities demonstrates, once again, that Mr. Baldwin acted responsibly and did not have control over any production issues that were identified in the OSHA report,” he said. “Additionally, the interviews and affidavits disclosed today continue to corroborate Mr. Baldwin’s description of the events—including an affidavit from the Detective stating that the cameraman, who was standing next to Ms. Hutchins and Mr. Souza at the time of the accident, confirmed that Mr. Baldwin was ‘very careful’ with guns on the set.”
Souza described the shooting incident in an interview from his hospital bed.
“A very loud bang, and it felt like somebody kicked me in the shoulder,” he said. “And then I was down on my a–, and then I look over and see the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, with blood coming out of her back…I think it went through her and into me.”
Gutierrez Reed, who Baldwin said handed him the gun, was also interviewed by police and gave her side of the story.
“I’m their armorer,” she said. “Or at least I was.”
“I’m supposed to check the guns and I load the guns and I hand the guns off to the actor,” she said before explaining that she has only been an armorer for a few months but has been around guns her entire life.
