Surprise development in Baldwin case

Author: Editors Desk Source: News Corp Australia Network:

February 20, 2022 at 16:59

The prosecutor investigating the deadly shooting on the set of Rust has made an unexpected admission after watching Alec Baldwin’s tell-all interview.

Alec Baldwin may have fired the shot that killed Rust cinematographer Halyna Hutchins without pulling the gun’s trigger, a US prosecutor has said.

Santa Fe District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies told Vanity Fair she had watched Alec Baldwin’s bombshell interview with US network ABC in December and was drawn to the actor’s claim that he did not pull the trigger, theNew York Post reports.

“You can pull the hammer back without actually pulling the trigger and without actually locking it,” Ms Carmack-Altwies said. “So you pull it back partway, it doesn’t lock, and then if you let it go, the firing pin can hit the primer of the bullet.”

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Baldwin sat down for a TV interview about the tragedy last December. ABC

Baldwin insisted in the interview that the trigger was never pulled.

“I would never point a gun at anyone and pull the trigger at them, never,” the former 30 Rock star said.

Ms Carmack-Altwies launched an unofficial investigation of her own to test Baldwin’s claims that he had only pulled back the hammer of the gun before it went off, firing the live bullet that fatally struck Hutchins in the chest and wounded the film’s director Joel Souza, who was hit in the clavicle.

“I didn’t know too much about guns, certainly not about 1850s-era revolvers. So when I first heard that, I was like, ‘Oh, that’s crazy,’” she told Vanity Fair.

Halyna Hutchins was killed during production on Rust.

Baldwin in costume on set shortly before the tragedy unfolded. Picture: Instagram

She then requested that one of her investigators bring his old-style revolver to her office to test if a mechanical malfunction could have caused the gun to go off. They cleared a room, and she had two investigators inspect the gun to confirm it was not loaded.

Her test revealed that the hammer could have caused the live round to fire, however official results from an FBI analysis of the weapon are still pending.

While Baldwin said he did not pull the trigger, a lawsuit filed by a Rust script supervisor in November alleges that he “intentionally” fired the gun at Hutchins.

On Tuesday, lawyers for Halyna Hutchins’ family filed a wrongful-death suit against Baldwin.

He responded with an Instagram post that simply included an image of an art instalment from the Parrish Art Museum that says: “Everything is going to be all right.”

This article originally appeared in the New York Post and was reproduced with permission