EXCLUSIVE: Gun that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on set of Rust was a vintage Colt pistol: Weapon was handed to Alec Baldwin by assistant director who told him it was safe
The gun that killed filmmaker Halyna Hutchins was a Colt pistol, DailyMail.com has exclusively learned.
Alec Baldwin was handling the vintage gun on the set of Rust in Santa Fe, New Mexico, when it accidentally discharged – killing mom-of-one Hutchins, 42, and wounding director Joel Souza.
According to a call sheet obtained by DailyMail.com, Baldwin was taking part in a mock gunfight inside the church building on the Bonanza Ranch film set when Hutchins was hit.
Co-stars Jensen Ackles, Swen Temmel and Travis Hammer were also in the scene – numbered 121 - alongside Baldwin’s stunt double Blake Teixeira and stunt coordinator Allan Graf.
Production notes show the Colt pistol was one of several weapons on set at the time but the only one used in 121 and the preceding 118.
Filming had been due to continue with a scene that showed Baldwin being thrown into a stagecoach but it was halted following the accident.
Further scenes featuring Baldwin and Ackles had been scheduled for today and over the weekend but have now been postponed indefinitely.
Alec Baldwin was wielding a vintage Colt pistol, like the one pictured above, when it accidentally went off. It is not known who loaded the weapon and why it went off as a replacement crew was brought in the day of the incident
An inconsolable Alec Baldwin is shown, left, yesterday outside the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office after accidentally shooting and killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, right. They were among few original workers on set after others walked off earlier in the day in a union row
Actors (L-R) Jensen Ackles, Travis Hammer and Swen Temmel were all on set when the firearm went off
The crew on Baldwin's movie set were already concerned about gun safety before he accidentally shot and killed Hutchins, and the prop master in charge of the firearm that killed her had reportedly just joined the crew after a union walkout.
A search warrant released Friday said that an assistant director handed Baldwin a gun loaded with live rounds and indicated it was safe to use in the moments before the fatal shooting.
The warrant indicated that a single bullet struck Hutchins in the chest, and then struck director Joel Souza in the shoulder as he was standing behind her, injuring him, suggesting the bullet traveled all the way through Hutchins' body.
Unionized workers had walked off the set hours before the fatal shooting, after they complained about long hours, shoddy conditions and another safety incident days earlier involving 'two misfires' of a prop weapon.
And the yet-unnamed prop master who oversaw the gun used in the fatal shooting was a nonunion worker who was 'just brought in' to replace the workers who left over safety concerns, a source involved in the movie told the New York Post.
Unionized employees had been complaining about the fact they had to stay overnight in Albuquerque - an hour's drive from the set - and not Sante Fe because production wouldn't pay for their hotels, according to sources cited by The Los Angeles Times and multiple social media posts by film and TV insiders.
When they turned up to set to clear their things on Thursday, they found they'd been replaced by locals.
It begs the question of who those local workers were, what their training was and to what extent did they check the weapon before it was handed to Baldwin.
Deadline also cites an unnamed source who said a gun had gone off 'in a cabin' while someone was holding it, days prior to the shooting that killed Hutchins.
'A gun had two misfires in a closed cabin. They just fired loud pops – a person was just holding it in their hands and it went off,' they said, apparently referring to unintentional discharges.
Rust Production LLC did not respond to repeated requests for comment from DailyMail.com on Friday about the incident, but members of the union that represents many of the crew who were involved in the production said they had expressed fears about on-set safety.
An aerial view of the Bonanza Creek Ranch in Santa Fe, where the movie was being filmed. Workers had been protesting over the fact production wouldn't pay for them to stay in hotels and motels in Sante Fe, instead forcing them to drive an hour to Albuquerque 
Production of the film has stopped now in light of the tragedy. The Santa Fe County Sheriff's Department is investigating and 'collecting evidence', a spokesman said on Friday 
Union members vented on social media before the tragedy about the poor conditions on the set of the film. They talked about having to sleep in their cars at the set rather than make the drive back to Albuquerque because they were too exhausted
It is the same union that had been threatened to galvanize an industry-wide strike in protest over poor working conditions including low pay and laxed safety. IATSE Local 44 - whose members were involved in the Rust production - said in a statement to its members that no union members were on the set on Thursday.
ALEC BALDWIN ON-SET TRAGEDY: WHAT COULD HAVE GONE WRONG?
The Santa Fe Sheriff's Office continues to investigate what exactly happened on the set that led to the death of Hutchins and the injury of the director, but past accidents involving guns on movie sets present a range of options for what could have led to the tragedy.
Squib load - something was lodged in the barrel of the gun when Baldwin fired
One possibility is that an object was stuck in the barrel of the prop gun that Baldwin was using. Known as a squib load, it happens when a cartridge isn't fired from the barrel because the gas isn't strong enough to push it out.
In itself, it is not dangerous and can be fixed if the gun is safely cleared but if someone keeps firing rounds from that same gun - live or not - it can be highly dangerous.
If a second round is fired behind the stuck round, it can cause the weapon to explode, or injure people in the near vicinity.
A real bullet was accidentally loaded, or part of one was, instead of a blank
After firing the gun, Baldwin's immediate reaction was to ask why he'd been handed a 'hot' gun - meaning one containing live bullets.
That is what happened in the 1993 shooting of actor Brandon Bruce Lee on the set of The Crow.
Those on set thought the gun was loaded with blanks, but an autopsy revealed a .44 caliber bullet was lodged near Lee's spine.
Police recovered dummy shell casings from the set.
A dummy, unlike a blank, looks like a live round with a bullet at the tip of the cartridge.
The difference between live rounds and blanks is the tip of the cartridge where the lethal bullet is contained is not there on a blank. Sometimes they are replaced with cotton or paper. Dummy bullets, unlike blanks, look like ordinary bullets but aren't meant to contain the metal bullet tip either
Blast from the blank struck something else on set
One possibility, though it is not likely, is that the blank hit something else, damaged it, and caused that prop or piece of equipment to send pieces flying towards the director and Hutchins.
Rhys Muldoon who has used guns on set many times and says even blanks are dangerous, speculated at that possibility, telling the BBC: 'The first thought I had is this is a close up of a gun being fired by the actor, very close to the frame of the camera, that has misfired, hit the DoP, and then something has either come off the French Flag or the black box like a part of the camera and hit the director as well.'
But movie experts say even in those cases, there should be more safeguards in place.
'If you are in the line of fire... You would have a face mask, you would have goggles, you would stand behind a Perspex screen, and you would minimize the number of people by the camera.
'What I don't understand in this instance is how two people have been injured, one tragically killed, in the same event,' Steven Hall, who has worked on films such as Fury and The Imitation Game, told BBC.
One text message that was circulating on social media, shared repeatedly by union members, refers to a 'walk out' by staff the day before the tragedy.
The text message claims that Halyna was one of the few people who decided to stay. She belonged to IATSE Local 600 and had been campaigning for better conditions for her team when she was killed.
One person who was involved with the production posted on social media that crew had been sleeping in their cars at the movie set because they were too tired to drive the one-hour back to Albuquerque after grueling days.
The movie does not have a large budget like other productions, and one experienced prop master who was offered the job turned it down because it wasn't paying enough for her to take the job.
DailyMail.com spoke with the crew member who ranted on social media about the deplorable work conditions that led union members to walk out hours before the fatal accident.
'I am literally on the show in New Mexico with him and the producers on that movie are treating the local crew like f**king dog sh*t,' he wrote in one post earlier this week.
'At the moment I'm fighting to get my crew, on this movie, hotel rooms when we go long or are too tired to drive the hour back from location to Albuquerque,' he wrote in another. 'They either say no or offer a garbage roadside motel….'
Reached by DailyMail.com and shown the posts in question, the member, who lives in Albuquerque, N.M., didn't deny he wrote them. But he wouldn't answer follow-up questions, saying he didn't want to interfere with the police investigation.
'I can't speak to anything until I know that the police have the strongest possible case against the people who are ultimately responsible for this,' he told DailyMail.com.
Zak Knight, a pyrotechnic and special effects engineer who is a member of Local 44, told DailyMail.com on Friday that he'd heard from others involved in the production that there was a walk-out.
'It's very possible that the union members said 'we're out', and they brought in people to fill the positions on the fly. There's a lot of grey area.'
He added that different gun laws between New Mexico and California may have also contributed to the accident. In California, both a trained armorer and a prop master is required on a film set and those are the standards the union adheres to as well.
'You will find the best and most well-trained individuals in Los Angeles. You can't guarantee that as you go across the country,' he told DailyMail.com on Friday.
In the days before the tragedy, IATSE had been threatening a large-scale strike that would have crippled Hollywood production. Among the complaints were overworking staff and poor rates. Baldwin recorded a video of himself encouraging the union members to strike if they felt they needed to, saying studio bosses 'don't give a f**k about you', that the union shared online.
'There's a direct correlation between maintaining a safe set and the hours that we work. At a certain time there's no such thing as a safe set if we're all exhausted,' Knight, a special effects artist, said.
Whatever happened in the moments leading up to her death, Knight said it was caused by a 'cascade of failures' by multiple people.
'We have a hard and fast rule that no live ammunition ever goes into a prop truck or set at any time. We just don't do it.
'If you see bullets on set they are complete dummy rounds and are in no way functional. This goes back to Brandon Lee. There's protocol.
'There should have never been live rounds on a movie set, that's number one. Number two is every single person on a movie set has a right to inspect a weapon before it's fired. And number three is, there is no reason to ever put a person in front of a weapon that's firing.
'Anytime you see a movie where the barrel is pointed down the camera lens, there should not be an operator behind it. It's obvious that the considerations of this resulted in that gun being pointed directly at two people.
'We would have additionally had a barrier between them.
'A large number of people failed to do our protocols... every accident is a cascade of events,' he said.
Baldwin was handed a loaded weapon by an assistant director who indicated it was safe to use in the moments before the actor fatally shot a cinematographer, court records released Friday show.
The assistant director did not know the prop gun was loaded with live rounds, according to a search warrant filed in a Santa Fe court.
The warrant was obtained Friday so that investigators could document the scene at the ranch where the shooting took place. It notes that Baldwin´s blood-stained costume was taken as evidence, as was the weapon that was fired.
Investigators also seized other prop guns and ammunition that were being used during shooting of the film starring Baldwin.
One Santa Fe prop master told Daily Mail that had the gun been checked properly before it was handed to Baldwin, the tragedy wouldn't have occurred.
'If they'd done their job checking the weapon this wouldn't have happened. You show the assistant director the weapon, you show the actor the weapon, you show everybody it's a safe weapon. There's a big chain of command that missed an opportunity to save a life.'
Rust Productions LLC has opened an internal investigation into what happened but will not comment on the specifics.
A Sante Fe County Sheriff Department spokesman said on Friday afternoon: 'The investigation remains active and open. Witnesses continue to be interviewed and evidence collected.'
In addition to the criminal probe, New Mexico's Occupational Health and Safety Bureau is investigating Hutchins' death, and could impose civil penalties even if no charges are brought in the case.
'Our state OSHA program is investigating this,' Rebecca Roose, deputy cabinet secretary of the New Mexico Environment Department,' told Deadline.
'The state takes all workplace safety issues very seriously and will work diligently through our investigation of this tragic fatality.'
Baldwin, 63, tweeted on Friday afternoon to say he had spoken with the victim's husband and that he was fully cooperating with law enforcement.
'There are no words to convey my shock and sadness regarding the tragic accident that took the life of Halyna Hutchins, a wife, mother and deeply admired colleague of ours.
'I'm fully cooperating with the police investigation to address how this tragedy occurred and I am in touch with her husband, offering my support to him and his family.
'My heart is broken for her husband, their son, and all who knew and loved Halyna,' he said.
He was pictured doubled over in grief on Thursday after speaking to the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Department.
Union members vented on social media before the tragedy about the poor conditions on the set of the film. They talked about having to sleep in their cars at the set rather than make the drive back to Albuquerque because they were too exhausted
It is the same union that had been threatened to galvanize an industry-wide strike in protest over poor working conditions including low pay and laxed safety. IATSE Local 44 - whose members were involved in the Rust production - said in a statement to its members that no union members were on the set on Thursday.
ALEC BALDWIN ON-SET TRAGEDY: WHAT COULD HAVE GONE WRONG?
The Santa Fe Sheriff's Office continues to investigate what exactly happened on the set that led to the death of Hutchins and the injury of the director, but past accidents involving guns on movie sets present a range of options for what could have led to the tragedy.
Squib load - something was lodged in the barrel of the gun when Baldwin fired
One possibility is that an object was stuck in the barrel of the prop gun that Baldwin was using. Known as a squib load, it happens when a cartridge isn't fired from the barrel because the gas isn't strong enough to push it out.
In itself, it is not dangerous and can be fixed if the gun is safely cleared but if someone keeps firing rounds from that same gun - live or not - it can be highly dangerous.
If a second round is fired behind the stuck round, it can cause the weapon to explode, or injure people in the near vicinity.
A real bullet was accidentally loaded, or part of one was, instead of a blank
After firing the gun, Baldwin's immediate reaction was to ask why he'd been handed a 'hot' gun - meaning one containing live bullets.
That is what happened in the 1993 shooting of actor Brandon Bruce Lee on the set of The Crow.
Those on set thought the gun was loaded with blanks, but an autopsy revealed a .44 caliber bullet was lodged near Lee's spine.
Police recovered dummy shell casings from the set.
A dummy, unlike a blank, looks like a live round with a bullet at the tip of the cartridge.
The difference between live rounds and blanks is the tip of the cartridge where the lethal bullet is contained is not there on a blank. Sometimes they are replaced with cotton or paper. Dummy bullets, unlike blanks, look like ordinary bullets but aren't meant to contain the metal bullet tip either
Blast from the blank struck something else on set
One possibility, though it is not likely, is that the blank hit something else, damaged it, and caused that prop or piece of equipment to send pieces flying towards the director and Hutchins.
Rhys Muldoon who has used guns on set many times and says even blanks are dangerous, speculated at that possibility, telling the BBC: 'The first thought I had is this is a close up of a gun being fired by the actor, very close to the frame of the camera, that has misfired, hit the DoP, and then something has either come off the French Flag or the black box like a part of the camera and hit the director as well.'
But movie experts say even in those cases, there should be more safeguards in place.
'If you are in the line of fire... You would have a face mask, you would have goggles, you would stand behind a Perspex screen, and you would minimize the number of people by the camera.
'What I don't understand in this instance is how two people have been injured, one tragically killed, in the same event,' Steven Hall, who has worked on films such as Fury and The Imitation Game, told BBC.
One text message that was circulating on social media, shared repeatedly by union members, refers to a 'walk out' by staff the day before the tragedy.
The text message claims that Halyna was one of the few people who decided to stay. She belonged to IATSE Local 600 and had been campaigning for better conditions for her team when she was killed.
One person who was involved with the production posted on social media that crew had been sleeping in their cars at the movie set because they were too tired to drive the one-hour back to Albuquerque after grueling days.
The movie does not have a large budget like other productions, and one experienced prop master who was offered the job turned it down because it wasn't paying enough for her to take the job.
DailyMail.com spoke with the crew member who ranted on social media about the deplorable work conditions that led union members to walk out hours before the fatal accident.
'I am literally on the show in New Mexico with him and the producers on that movie are treating the local crew like f**king dog sh*t,' he wrote in one post earlier this week.
'At the moment I'm fighting to get my crew, on this movie, hotel rooms when we go long or are too tired to drive the hour back from location to Albuquerque,' he wrote in another. 'They either say no or offer a garbage roadside motel….'
Reached by DailyMail.com and shown the posts in question, the member, who lives in Albuquerque, N.M., didn't deny he wrote them. But he wouldn't answer follow-up questions, saying he didn't want to interfere with the police investigation.
'I can't speak to anything until I know that the police have the strongest possible case against the people who are ultimately responsible for this,' he told DailyMail.com.
Zak Knight, a pyrotechnic and special effects engineer who is a member of Local 44, told DailyMail.com on Friday that he'd heard from others involved in the production that there was a walk-out.
'It's very possible that the union members said 'we're out', and they brought in people to fill the positions on the fly. There's a lot of grey area.'
He added that different gun laws between New Mexico and California may have also contributed to the accident. In California, both a trained armorer and a prop master is required on a film set and those are the standards the union adheres to as well.
'You will find the best and most well-trained individuals in Los Angeles. You can't guarantee that as you go across the country,' he told DailyMail.com on Friday.
In the days before the tragedy, IATSE had been threatening a large-scale strike that would have crippled Hollywood production. Among the complaints were overworking staff and poor rates. Baldwin recorded a video of himself encouraging the union members to strike if they felt they needed to, saying studio bosses 'don't give a f**k about you', that the union shared online.
'There's a direct correlation between maintaining a safe set and the hours that we work. At a certain time there's no such thing as a safe set if we're all exhausted,' Knight, a special effects artist, said.
Whatever happened in the moments leading up to her death, Knight said it was caused by a 'cascade of failures' by multiple people.
'We have a hard and fast rule that no live ammunition ever goes into a prop truck or set at any time. We just don't do it.
'If you see bullets on set they are complete dummy rounds and are in no way functional. This goes back to Brandon Lee. There's protocol.
'There should have never been live rounds on a movie set, that's number one. Number two is every single person on a movie set has a right to inspect a weapon before it's fired. And number three is, there is no reason to ever put a person in front of a weapon that's firing.
'Anytime you see a movie where the barrel is pointed down the camera lens, there should not be an operator behind it. It's obvious that the considerations of this resulted in that gun being pointed directly at two people.
'We would have additionally had a barrier between them.
'A large number of people failed to do our protocols... every accident is a cascade of events,' he said.
Baldwin was handed a loaded weapon by an assistant director who indicated it was safe to use in the moments before the actor fatally shot a cinematographer, court records released Friday show.
The assistant director did not know the prop gun was loaded with live rounds, according to a search warrant filed in a Santa Fe court.
The warrant was obtained Friday so that investigators could document the scene at the ranch where the shooting took place. It notes that Baldwin´s blood-stained costume was taken as evidence, as was the weapon that was fired.
Investigators also seized other prop guns and ammunition that were being used during shooting of the film starring Baldwin.
One Santa Fe prop master told Daily Mail that had the gun been checked properly before it was handed to Baldwin, the tragedy wouldn't have occurred.
'If they'd done their job checking the weapon this wouldn't have happened. You show the assistant director the weapon, you show the actor the weapon, you show everybody it's a safe weapon. There's a big chain of command that missed an opportunity to save a life.'
Rust Productions LLC has opened an internal investigation into what happened but will not comment on the specifics.
A Sante Fe County Sheriff Department spokesman said on Friday afternoon: 'The investigation remains active and open. Witnesses continue to be interviewed and evidence collected.'
In addition to the criminal probe, New Mexico's Occupational Health and Safety Bureau is investigating Hutchins' death, and could impose civil penalties even if no charges are brought in the case.
'Our state OSHA program is investigating this,' Rebecca Roose, deputy cabinet secretary of the New Mexico Environment Department,' told Deadline.
'The state takes all workplace safety issues very seriously and will work diligently through our investigation of this tragic fatality.'
Baldwin, 63, tweeted on Friday afternoon to say he had spoken with the victim's husband and that he was fully cooperating with law enforcement.
'There are no words to convey my shock and sadness regarding the tragic accident that took the life of Halyna Hutchins, a wife, mother and deeply admired colleague of ours.
'I'm fully cooperating with the police investigation to address how this tragedy occurred and I am in touch with her husband, offering my support to him and his family.
'My heart is broken for her husband, their son, and all who knew and loved Halyna,' he said.
He was pictured doubled over in grief on Thursday after speaking to the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Department. Remembered by friends as a 'kind' and 'loving soul', Halyna lived in Venice Beach, California, with her husband Matthew, a lawyer, and their son Andros, known affectionately as her 'little man' and thought to be around nine years old.
'Halyna loved him so much and enjoyed watching him grow into the handsome boy he is today,' one friend wrote in a moving Instagram tribute. 'I know she is looking after him and Matt in this horribly scary time.'
Social media photos capture a playfulness and sense of adventure, with Halloween costume parties, road trips with friends and days out exploring all lit up by Halyna's smile.
She was also highly regarded by her peers and had been tipped as a 'rising star' by other cinematographers. 'She was somebody who was absolutely dedicated to art and integrity,' director, colleague and friend Adam Mortimer told GMB this morning. 'I can tell already she was going to be a genius.'
Halya (right) on a visit back to Kiev in December 2018. She was raised on a military base in the country and later attended the National University of Kyiv, studying International Journalism
Remembered by friends as a 'kind' and 'loving soul', Halyna lived in Venice Beach, California , with her husband Matthew, a lawyer, and their son Andros, pictured in an old Facebook photo
Baldwin, 62, was filming a scene for new film Rust when the gun went off around 1.50pm, fatally wounding Hutchins and leaving writer-director Joel Souza, 48, injured. The incident took place at at Bonanza Creek Ranch.
Hutchins was rushed to the University of New Mexico Hospital in an air ambulance but was pronounced dead a short time after.
Souza was taken by ambulance to the Christus St Vincent Regional Medical Center. He has since been released although his exact condition is unclear.
Will Stewart, Daily Mail's Moscow correspondent, told how Halyna had worked for him in the mid-2000s.
'This is devastating and incomprehensible news about the death of Halyna Hutchins. She worked for my news agency from Kyiv for several years in the mid-2000s after graduating from a local university in International Journalism.
'Halyna was involved in many stories for British newspapers and magazines, but she showed a special talent for documentaries, perhaps her first taste of film in which she went on to be so successful in America.
'At this time while she was with us, in 2006, she was Associate Producer on a documentary for Discovery Channel on Ukrainian icon Leonid Stadnyk called World's Tallest Man, made by British company Wild Pictures.
'She was instrumental in Mr Stadnyk feeling at ease taking part in the documentary which focused on the problems of being exceptionally tall.
'The film, made by leading British director Richard Denton, with former BBC Head of Documentaries Paul Hamann as executive producer, would not have happened without her.
'Mr Stadnyk, a shy man, trusted Halyna after refusing many other film offers, and thanked her afterwards.
'Pictures ahead of the film shows him towering over Halyna at his home in the village of Podoliantsy.
'She later went to the US with her husband Matt and accomplished great things through her huge talent and creativity but also her relentless determination to study and learn.
'She once told my Russian colleagues that she felt she was a perpetual student in America, but her efforts paid off and she achieved the success she thoroughly deserved.
'It is tragic that she died in such a cruel and inexplicable way while doing the job she so loved.
'Our thoughts and prayers are with Matt and their son, and Halyna's family in Ukraine.'
Richard Denton, producer behind Shakespeare Uncovered and many films in the former USSR, said today: 'Halyna was the most wonderful, vital, lively and positive person to work with.
'She was friendly and enormously helpful. She handled everything from translating interviews to making Leonid's horse move in the right direction.
'She was completely unpretentious and incredibly professional.'
Her death was 'senseless and stupid.'
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