The wife of embattled actor, Alec Baldwin, has paid tribute to Halyna Hutchins, who was accidentally killed by her husband on-set of his new movie Rust.
Hilaria Baldwin on Monday took to Instagram and wrote: ‘My heart is with Halyna. Her husband. Her son. Their family and loved ones. And my Alec.
Alec, 63, accidentally killed the 42-year-old cinematographer and and wounded director Joel Souza on the set of their movie Rust in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on Thursday October 21.
Baldwin was rehearsing drawing his gun across his body when it went off. He thought the gun was loaded with blanks, after being told ‘cold gun’ as Assistant Director Dave Halls gave it to him.
There are now questions over how live ammunition made its way onto the set.
David Halls, the assistant director of Rust, the Western movie Baldwin was acting in and producing is being blamed for the shooting.
Search warrants reveal that Halls, and everyone else on the set, was unaware the gun he handed Baldwin contained live ammunition.
He had declared it a ‘cold’ weapon, meaning it was loaded only with blanks.
One crew member, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being blacklisted, told DailyMail.com that he’d worked with Halls on two similarly low-budget sets in Los Angeles in spring 2019, one where a revolver and Glock were used, and another involving shotguns.
Each morning they’d have a meeting to discuss the weapons and other safety issues, an industry standard. But he said Halls didn’t think they were needed.
‘He was very flippant about my insistence on having a safety meeting about the weapons, on both of the sets,’ said the crew member, who asked to use the pseudonym “Jay” and has worked on films for 10 years.
‘He would rush through it and say, alright guys, be safe, let’s get to work.’
‘Even though the guns were not loaded, you have to treat it as if it always is,’ he said. “And for me that means doing a safety meeting that may be seen as unnecessary but should absolutely be done so that everyone is on the same page.”
‘Systemically, so much pressure is put on the first assistant directors to meet a schedule, to ‘make the day,’ meaning to get all the work done that you already have scheduled for the day,’ he continued.
‘When it comes to safety on set, or having to wait for anything, because safety takes time, I have seen 1st ADs get annoyed for having to wait.
‘But they ultimately understand it needs to be done. But when I worked with him, it was the only time I’ve had any AD ask me, “Do we really need to have a safety meeting?”‘
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