Criminal charges possible, says district attorney

SANTA FE (New Mexico) • The Santa Fe County district attorney said on Tuesday that she was not ruling out criminal charges in last week's fatal shooting on a film set.

American actor Alec Baldwin was rehearsing with a gun that he had been told did not contain live ammunition when it went off, killing the film's cinematographer and wounding its director.

"We haven't ruled out anything," the district attorney, Ms Mary Carmack-Altwies, said in a telephone interview. "Everything at this point, including criminal charges, is on the table."

She said the investigation was focusing on ballistics in an effort to determine what kind of round was in the gun that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and on who had placed the ammunition in the gun.

"There were an enormous amount of bullets on this set, and we need to find out what kinds they were," Ms Carmack-Altwies said.

Detectives recovered three revolvers, spent casings and ammunition - in boxes, loose and in a fanny pack - while executing a search warrant on the set, according to an inventory of the items released on Monday.

The inventory did not specify what kind of ammunition was found on the set.

Ms Carmack-Altwies took issue with descriptions of the firearm used in the incident as "prop gun", saying that the terminology, which is used in some of the court documents related to the case, could give the misleading impression that it was not a real gun.

"It was a legit gun," she said, without naming specifically what kind of firearm was used. "It was an antique-era appropriate gun."

Detectives from the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office are proceeding carefully with the investigation, she said, citing the large number of witnesses and the need to methodically collect ballistics and forensics evidence.

The shooting occurred last Thursday on the set of a church where Baldwin was rehearsing a scene for Rust, a western in which he plays an outlaw.

According to affidavits included in applications for search warrants, Dave Halls, an assistant director on the set, had gone outside the church and taken the gun off a cart, where it had been placed by the film's armourer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed.

Halls handed the gun to Baldwin, who was rehearsing in the church, according to the affidavit, and said it was a "cold gun", indicating that it contained no live rounds and was safe for Baldwin to handle.

Baldwin then rehearsed a scene that involved "cross drawing" a revolver and pointing it towards the camera lens, according to the affidavit, when the gun fired - striking Hutchins in the chest and killing her, and hitting the director of the film, Joel Souza, in the shoulder, wounding him.

Detectives are still interviewing people who were on the set, Ms Carmack-Altwies said.

"It's probably weeks, if not months, of follow-up investigation that we're going to need to get to the point of charging."

NYTIMES