Alec Baldwin's Role in Tragic 'Rust' Shooting Questioned After DA Confirms Major Detail

Alec Baldwin and several other members of the production team of Rust are being sued by the family of slain cinematographer Halyna Hutchins after she was accidentally shot and killed on set, but Baldwin's role has recently been called into question. Baldwin was holding the gun when It went off but has maintained that he never pulled the trigger, and a new report from a district attorney has confirmed that such a situation could have occurred.

Santa Fe D.A. Mary Carmack-Altwies told Vanity Fair that Baldwin's story is possible. "You can pull the hammer back without actually pulling the trigger and without actually locking it," Carmack-Altwies explained. "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." Carmack-Altwies revealed that she was inspired to investigate this incident after seeing Baldwin's ABC interview.

"I would never point a gun at anyone and pull the trigger at them, never," Baldwin told Geroge Stephanopoulos for ABC News. "Someone put a live bullet in a gun, a bullet that wasn't even supposed to be on the property." He said he had no reason to believe a live bullet would be in the prop gun. 

According to TMZ, lawyers for Hutchins' husband and son filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Baldwin and others from the film's crew claiming Baldwin intentionally pulled the gun from its holster and pointed it in Hutchins' direction. "He released the revolver's hammer, and -- BAM -- defendant Baldwin fired the revolver," the suit reads. In addition to Baldwin, other defendants in the suit include Rust armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed and assistant director, David Halls. The suit also names multiple production companies, as well as the company that provided the ammunition. In the lawsuit, Hutchins' family claims that cost-cutting methods — including hiring inexperienced armorers and requiring the armorer to also handle the duties of assistant props master — led to "super unsafe" conditions, as alleged by a camera operator who made safety complaints just days before Hutchins' death. 

This is not the first lawsuit to emerge in the wake of Hutchins' death. Rust medic Cherlyn Schaefer previously filed a lawsuit against Gutierrez-Reed and Halls, as well as the film's production company and other individuals. Schaefer claims that alleged negligence on part of the defendants caused her to experience severe emotional distress in the aftermath of the shooting.

Hutchins was killed on the set of Rust on Oct. 21, after a prop gun that Baldwin was holding, discharged. The gun was initially not believed to be loaded with live rounds. In addition to Hutchins' death, the incident also wounded the film's director, Joel Souza. Following the incident, Baldwin released a statement on Twitter, and later he spoke to a group of photographers who were inquiring about the incident. "A woman died," he told the group, per Deadline. "She was my friend. She was my friend. The day I arrived in Santa Fe to start shooting, I took her to dinner with Joel, the director. We were a very, very well-oiled crew shooting a film together and then this horrible event happened."