District Attorney Stuns, Addresses Whether Alec Baldwin Will Be Criminally Prosecuted

The Santa Fe (N.M.) County district attorney said Tuesday she is not ruling out criminal charges against Alec Baldwin in the accidental fatal shooting of a cinemaphotographer last week on the set of Baldwin’s new movie, “Rust.”

Media reports say that Baldwin was rehearsing with a gun that he had been told did not contain live ammunition when it went off, killing Halyna Hutchins and wounding the director, Joel Souza. District attorney Mary Carmack-Altweis told dnyuz.com that the investigation was focusing on ballistic in an effort to determine what kind of round was in the gun that killed Hutchins, who, coincidentally, had placed the ammunition in the gun.

“Everything at this point, including criminal charges, is on the table,” Carmack-Altweis said. “There was an enormous amount of bullets on this set, and we need to find out what kinds they were.

The shooting occurred on Thursday on the set of a church where Baldwin was rehearsing for the movie, a Western, in which he plays an outlaw. Affadavits pointed out that Dave Halls, an assistant director on the set, had gone outside the church and taken the gun out of a car where it had been placed by the film’s armorer. Halls handed the gun to Baldwin, and the affidavit said it was a “cold gun.”

“It was a legit gun. It was an antique-era appropriate gun” Carmack-Altweis said.

Dnyuz.com reported that Baldwin had rehearsed a scene that involved “cross drawing” a revolver and pointing in toward the camera lens, according to the affidavit, when the gun fired, striking Hutchins in the chest and killing her and hitting Souza in the shoulder.

Expected to speak with reporters Wednesday morning along with Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza, Carmack-Altweis said that the shooting figured to be among the most challenging cases in Santa Fe County’s recent memory, media reports said. {eoa}

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